Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/330

Animal Representation. 277 never having had the opportunity of comparing his copy with the model. If the Hkeness of the lion is not everywhere rendered with an equal degree of life and sincerity, it is pardy because his work is of varying merit, and partly because, by dint of repetition, the image assumed a more or less conventional aspect. Such would be the group so often beheld on engraved stones, where the lion is represented bringing down an ox, a stag, or an antelope. Nevertheless, here and there we come across metal and ivory plates of a purely decorative character, exhibiting on the whole a bold and frank treatment (Fig. 396). This does not by any Fin. 399.~lvory box. means exhaust the list of animals figured in the work of the native artist. Thus, a gold ornament shows two stags lying down atop of each other (Fig. 397), whilst a wild goat, agrimi as it is called by modern Greeks, is pictured as vainly trying to escape from a hound which has fastened on to her belly (Fig. 398). The dog is ill-drawn. As to the horse, he appears both on the sepulchral stelae, on one of the daggers {Fig. 360), and on a bronze plaque (Fig. 388) ; whilst a long-horned ram has been pressed into service to decorate the four sides of a casket which was found in the Menidi grave. The tablets