Note 142 — Chapter I · HOMER—THE POSITION OF FISHERMEN

“The choice of the subjects (in The Shield of Achilles), especially the absence of mythological subjects, the arrangement of the scenes in concentric bands, and the peculiar technique, all point to oriental, i.e. in the main to Phœnician and Assyrian influence. In these respects the earliest actual Greek work known to us by description, viz. The Chest of Cypselus (c. 700 b.c.), consisting of cedar wood, ivory, and gold, and richly adorned (according to Pausanias, V. 17) with figures in relief, holds an intermediate place between The Shield of Achilles and the art of the classic period. Hence we infer that the Shield belongs to the earlier time, when (as we also learn from Homer) the Phœnicians were the great carriers between the Mediterranean countries and the East” (Monro, Il., XVIII). Professor Jebb (Homer, p. 66) ranks, in the earlier period, Phœnician lower than Phrygian influence, but the latest writer on the subject—F. Poulsen, Der Orient und die frühgriechische Kunst, Leipzig-Berlin, 1912—makes large claims for the influence of the Phœnicians in art.