FullReads

The walls were massy brass; the cornice high
Blue metals crowned in colours of the sky;
Rich plates of gold the folding-doors incase;
The pillars silver on a brazen base;
Silver the lintels deep-projecting o’er;
And gold the ringlets that command the door.

Dogs of the same precious metals keep watch on either side, like the lions over the old gate-way of Mycenae, or the gigantic, human-headed bulls at the entrance of an Assyrian palace. Within doors the burning lights at supper-time are supported in the hands of golden images of boys, while the guests recline on a couch running all along the wall, covered with peculiarly sumptuous women’s work.

From these two glittering descriptions manifestly something must be deducted; we are in wonder-land, and among supernatural or magical conditions. But the forging of the shield and the wonderful house of Alcinous are no merely incongruous episodes in Homer, but the consummation of what is always characteristic of him, a constant preoccupation, namely, with every form of lovely craftsmanship, resting on all things, as he says, like the shining of the sun. We seem to pass, in reading him, through the treasures of some royal collection; in him the presentation of almost every aspect of life is beautified by the work of cunning hands. The thrones, coffers, couches of curious carpentry, are studded with bossy ornaments of precious metal effectively disposed, or inlaid with stained ivory, or blue cyanus, or amber, or pale amber-like gold; the surfaces of the stone conduits, the sea-walls, the public washing-troughs, the ramparts on which the weary soldiers rest themselves when returned to Troy, are fair and smooth; all the fine qualities, in colour and texture, of woven stuff are carefully noted–the fineness, closeness, softness, pliancy, gloss, the whiteness or nectar-like tints in which the weaver delights to work; to weave the sea-purple threads is the appropriate function of queens and noble women. All the Homeric shields are more or less ornamented with variously coloured metal, terrible sometimes, like Leonardo’s, with some monster or grotesque. The numerous sorts of cups are bossed with golden studs, or have handles wrought with figures, of doves, for instance. The great brazen cauldrons bear an epithet which means flowery. The trappings of the horses, the various parts of the chariots, are formed of various metals. The women’s ornaments and the instruments of their toilet are described–

porpas te gnamptas th’ helikas, kalukas te kai hormous [4]

[Footnote 4:
Transliteration: porpas te gnamptas th’ helikas, kalukas te kai hormous. Translation: “delicate brooches, spriralled bracelets, rosettes, and necklaces.” Homer, Iliad 18.400. ]

–the golden vials for unguents. Use and beauty are still undivided; all that men’s hands are set to make has still a fascination alike for workmen and spectators. For such dainty splendour Troy, indeed, is especially conspicuous. But then Homer’s Trojans are essentially Greeks–Greeks of Asia; and Troy, though more advanced in all elements of civilisation, is no real contrast to the western shore of the Aegean. It is no barbaric world that we see, but the sort of world, we may think, that would have charmed also our comparatively jaded sensibilities, with just that quaint simplicity which we too enjoy in its productions; above all, in its wrought metal, which loses perhaps more than any other sort of work by becoming mechanical. The metal-work which Homer describes in such variety is all hammer-work, all the joinings being effected by pins or riveting. That is just the sort of metal-work which, in a certain naivete and vigour, is still of all work the most expressive of actual contact with dexterous fingers; one seems to trace in it, on every particle of the partially resisting material, the touch and play of the shaping instruments, in highly trained hands, under the guidance of exquisitely disciplined senses–that cachet, or seal of nearness to the workman’s hand, which is the special charm of all good metal-work, of early metal-work in particular.