looking at those objects as his own heroes;
their gleaming aspect brightens all he says, and has taken hold, one
might think, of his language, his very vocabulary becoming
chryselephantine.  Homer's artistic descriptions, though enlarged by
fancy, are not wholly imaginary, and the extant remains of monuments
of the earliest historical age are like lingering relics of that
dream in a tamer but real world.

The art of the heroic age, then, as represented in Homer, connects
itself, on the one side, with those fabulous jewels so prominent in
mythological story, and entwined sometimes so oddly in its
representation of human fortunes--the necklace of Eriphyle, the
necklace of Helen, which Menelaus, it was said, offered at Delphi to
Athene Pronoea, on the eve of his expedition against Troy--mythical
objects, indeed, but which yet bear witness even thus early to the
aestheticany other mode of statuary; and the invention of
the art of casting is really the discovery of liberty in
composition.*

And, at last, about the year 576 B.C., we come to the first true
school of sculptors, the first clear example, as we seem to discern,
of a communicable style, reflecting and interpreting some real
individuality (the double personality, in this case, of two brothers)
in the masters who evolved it, conveyed to disciples who came to
acquire it from distant places, and taking root through them at
various centres, where the names of the [234] masters became
attached, of course,.  to many fair works really by the hands of the
pupils.  Dipoenus and Scyllis, these first true masters, were born in
Crete; but their work is connected mainly with Sicyon, at that time
the chief seat of