To this view of the heroic age of Greek art as being, so to speak, an
age of real gold, an age delighting itself in precious material and
exquisite handiwork in all tectonic crafts, the recent extraordinary
discoveries at Troy and Mycenae are, on any plausible theory of their
date and origin, a witness. The aesthetic critic needs always to be
on his guard against the confusion of mere curiosity or antiquity
with beauty in art. Among the objects discovered at Troy--mere
curiosities, some of them, however interesting and instructive--the
so-called royal cup of Priam, in solid gold, two-handled and double-
lipped, (the smaller lip designed for the host and his libation, the
larger for the guest,) has, in the [211] very simplicity of its
design, the grace of the economy with which it exactly fulfils its
purpose, a positive beauty, an absolute value for the aesthetic
sense, while strange and new enough, if it really settles at last a
much-debated expression of Homer; while the "diadem," with its
twisted chains and flowers of pale gold, shows that those profuse
golden fringes, waving so comely as he moved, which Hephaestus
wrought for the helmet of Achilles, were really within the compass of
early Greek art.
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