They are conducting Hyacinthus to heaven, with
Polyboea, the sister of Hyacinthus, who died, as is told, while yet a
virgin. . . . Hercules also is figured on the tomb; he too carried to
heaven by Athene and the other gods. The daughters of Thestius also
are upon the altar, and the Seasons again, and the Muses."
It was as if many lines of solemn thought had been meant to unite,
about the resting-place of this local Adonis, in imageries full of
some dim promise of immortal life.
But it was not so much in care for old idols as in the making of new
ones that Greek art was at this time engaged. This whole first
period of Greek art might, indeed, be called the period of graven
images, and all its workmen sons of Daedalus; for Daedalus is the
mythical, or all but mythical, representative of all those arts which
are combined in the making of lovelier idols than had heretofore been
seen. The old Greek word which is at the root of the name Daedalus,+
the name of a craft rather than a proper name, probably means to work
curiously--all curiously beautiful wood-work is Daedal work; the main
point about the curiously beautiful [238] chamber in which Nausicaa
sleeps, in the Odyssey, being that, like some exquisite Swiss chalet,
it is wrought in wood.
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