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[Footnote 1:
The related Greek noun techne is defined as follows: “art, skill, regular method of making a thing.” (Liddell and Scott.) ]

The history of Greek art, then, begins, as some have fancied general history to begin, in a golden age, but in an age, so to speak, of real gold, the period of those first twisters and hammerers of the precious metals–men who had already discovered the flexibility of silver and the ductility of gold, the capacity of both for infinite delicacy of handling, and who enjoyed, with complete freshness, a sense of beauty and fitness in their work–a period of which that flower of gold on a silver stalk, picked up lately in one of the graves at Mycenae, or the legendary golden honeycomb of Daedalus, might serve as the symbol. The heroic age of Greek art is the age of the hero as smith.

There are in Homer two famous descriptive passages in which this delight in curious metal-work is very prominent; the description in the Iliad of the shield of Achilles* [2] and the description of the house of Alcinous in the Odyssey.* [3] The shield of Achilles is part of the suit of armour which Hephaestus makes for him at the request of Thetis; and it is wrought of variously Coloured metals, woven into a great circular composition in relief, representing the world and the life in it. The various activities of man are recorded in this description in a series of idyllic incidents with such complete freshness, liveliness, and variety, that the reader from time to time may well forget himself, and fancy he is reading a mere description of the incidents of actual life. We peep into a little Greek town, and see in dainty miniature the bride coming from her chamber with torch-bearers and dancers, the people gazing from their doors, a quarrel between two persons in the market-place, the assembly of the elders to decide upon it. In another quartering is the spectacle of a city besieged, the walls defended by the old men, while the soldiers have stolen out and are lying in ambush. There is a fight on the river-bank; Ares and Athene, conspicuous in gold, and marked as divine persons by a scale larger than that of their followers, lead the host. The strange, mythical images of Ker, Eris, and Kudoimos mingle in the crowd. A third space upon the shield depicts the incidents of peaceful labour–the ploughshare passing through the field, of enameled black metal behind it, and golden before; the cup of mead held out to the ploughman when he reaches the end of the furrow; the reapers with their sheaves; the king standing in silent pleasure among them, intent upon his staff. There are the labourers in the vineyard in minutest detail; stakes of silver on which the vines hang; the dark trench about it, and one pathway through the midst; the whole complete and distinct, in variously coloured metal. All things and living creatures are in their places–the cattle coming to water to the sound of the herdsman’s pipe, various music, the rushes by the water-side, a lion-hunt with dogs, the pastures among the hills, a dance, the fair dresses of the male and female dancers, the former adorned with swords, the latter with crowns. It is an image of ancient life, its pleasure and business. For the centre, as in some quaint chart of the heavens, are the earth and the sun, the moon and constellations; and to close in all, right round, like a frame to the picture, the great river Oceanus, forming the rim of the shield, in some metal of dark blue.

[Footnote 2: 193. *Il. xviii.468-608. ]

[Footnote 3: 193. *Od. vii.37-132. ]

Still more fascinating, perhaps, because more completely realisable by the fancy as an actual thing–realisable as a delightful place to pass time in–is the description of the palace of Alcinous in the little island town of the Phaeacians, to which we are introduced in all the liveliness and sparkle of the morning, as real as something seen last summer on the sea-coast; although, appropriately, Ulysses meets a goddess, like a young girl carrying a pitcher, on his way up from the sea. Below the steep walls of the town, two projecting jetties allow a narrow passage into a haven of stone for the ships, into which the passer-by may look down, as they lie moored below the roadway. In the midst is the king’s house, all glittering, again, with curiously wrought metal; its brightness is “as the brightness of the sun or of the moon.” The heart of Ulysses beats quickly when he sees it standing amid plantations ingeniously watered, its floor and walls of brass throughout, with continuous cornice of dark iron; the doors are of gold, the door-posts and lintels of silver, the handles, again, of gold–