"
But what is most noticeable is, as I have already said, that this
work, like the chamber of Paris, like the Zeus of Pheidias, is
chryselephantine, its main fabric cedar, and the figures upon it
partly of ivory, partly of gold,* but (and this is the most peculiar
characteristic of its style) partly wrought out of the wood of the
chest itself. And, as we read the description, we can hardly help
distributing in fancy gold and ivory, respectively, to their
appropriate functions in the representation. The cup of Dionysus,
and the wings of certain horses there, Pausanias himself tells us
were golden. Were not the apples of the Hesperides, the necklace of
Eriphyle, the bridles, the armour, the unsheathed sword in the hand
of Amphiaraus, also of gold? Were not the other children, like the
white image of Sleep, especially the naked child Alcmaeon, of ivory?
with Alcestis and Helen, and that one of the Dioscuri whose beard was
still ungrown? Were not ivory and gold, again, combined in the
throne of Hercules, and in the three goddesses conducted before
Paris?
The "chest of Cypselus" fitly introduces the first historical period
of Greek art, a period [229] coming down to about the year 560 B.
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