The Aegean, with its islands,
is, then, a bond of union, not a barrier; and we must think of
Greece, as has been rightly said, as its whole continuous shore.
The characteristics of Greek art, indeed, in the heroic age, so far
as we can discern them, are those also of Phoenician art, its delight
in metal among the rest, of metal especially as an element in
architecture, the covering of everything with plates of metal. It
was from [218] Phoenicia that the costly material in which early
Greek art delighted actually came--ivory, amber, much of the precious
metals. These the adventurous Phoenician traders brought in return
for the mussel which contained the famous purple, in quest of which
they penetrated far into all the Greek havens. Recent discoveries
present the island of Cyprus, the great source of copper and copper-
work in ancient times, as the special mediator between the art of
Phoenicia and Greece; and in some archaic figures of Aphrodite with
her dove, brought from Cyprus and now in the British Museum--objects
you might think, at first sight, taken from the niches of a French
Gothic cathedral--are some of the beginnings, at least, of Greek
sculpture manifestly under the influence of Phoenician masters.
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