I have dwelt more upon the ornamental and religious vases, whether in clay or wrought in metal, than upon statues in bronze or marble, because their subjects, the manner of treating them, and the tools employed in executing them, seem properly to belong to painting. On the fictile vases, the subjects being chiefly applicable to funereal rites, represent the mysteries of Ceres, Bacchus, and Hercules. Any part of the fables concerning those divinities sufficed to indicate the mystery. I have seen a beautiful design of Triptolemus with a winged car, a type surely of the burial of the body in earth, while the living spirit shall revive, even as the corn sown in the field springeth up to beauty and use when the winter is gone. The struggles of Bacchus and Hercules, the death of Linus, the descent of Hercules to Hades, all these are compositions belonging strictly to picture, and form the first steps towards it; departing more from the nature of designs for sculptured friezes or tablets in bas-relief, than those other Bacchic subjects, where the Menadæ and their companions dance at fixed distances and independent of each other, or the graver Pyrrhic dancers that are supposed to be equally emblematical, and are frequently drawn on the vases or on the sides of altars, consecrated to the service of the temples. One of the most interesting works of the kind, of which the knowledge has come down to us, was the chest of Cypselus already mentioned, in the temple of Juno at Olympia in Elis[85], it was of cedar, inlaid with gold, silver, and ivory; it was covered with designs indicative of the mysteries, or representing funeral games. Whatever relates to Ceres or Proserpine, to Bacchus or to Hercules, as connected with Dis, is represented. Pausanias describes many figures, which my very imperfect knowledge of their mystic meaning would lead me to call miscellaneous; but they are doubtless connected with the main design. Among these are some representing the virtues and the arts. It is clear that the woman called Night, with a black child in one arm and a white one in the other, called Death and Sleep, has a reference to the usual mysteries of death. But the fancy of the artificer has brought together, according to the description, all the greater gods and older heroes, without any very perceptible connexion as to their position[86].