Elsewhere in the Iliad, tin is employed ornamentally, as it was on the pottery of the ancient pile-dwellers of Savoy.[343] But the poet is much more sparing of it than he is of either gold or silver. Even his imaginary stores appear to be strictly limited. ‘Relucent tin,’ however, bordered the breastplate presented by Achilles to Eumelus as a consolation-prize in the Patroclean games; the chariot of Diomed was ‘overlaid with gold and tin’;[344] the cuirass of Agamemnon was inlaid with parallel stripes, and the buckler of Agamemnon decorated with bosses of tin. Footnote 343: Dawkins, _Early Man in Britain_, p. 402. Footnote 344: _Iliad_, xxiii. 503. The metal was also turned to account by Hephæstus for the purpose of adding to the effect and variety of his delineations on the Shield of Achilles. But we get no hint as to how it came into Achæan hands; no rich man’s treasure contains it; and it drops completely out of sight in the Odyssey. Tin corrodes so readily that its extreme archæological rarity is not surprising. None has been found, either at Mycenæ or in any part of the stratified débris at Hissarlik.[345] Lead, on the other hand, has been disinterred from all the Trojan cities, and was in use at Mycenæ, both pure, and alloyed with silver. Among the objects brought to light there was a leaden figure of Aphrodite, doubtless an idol,[346] and a vessel in stag-shape composed of silver mixed with half its weight of lead.[347] The latter substance is unmentioned in the Odyssey, but is twice familiarly alluded to in the Iliad. Its cheapness and commonness can be gathered from the circumstance incidentally disclosed, that poor fishermen attached pieces of it as weights to their lines.[348] Its quality of softness comes in to illustrate the ease with which the spear of Iphidamas was turned by the silver in the belt of Agamemnon.[349] Footnote 345: Schliemann, _Troy_, pp. 31, 162. Footnote 346: Schuchhardt and Sellers, _op. cit._ p. 67. Footnote 347: Schliemann, _Mycenæ_, p. 257. Footnote 348: _Iliad_, xxiv. 80. Footnote 349: _Ib._ xi. 237. Tin and lead made part of the booty taken in the land of Midian by the Israelites, as well as of the Asiatic tribute paid to early Egyptian conquerors. But the lead disposed of by the Achæans of the Iliad was most likely brought by the Phœnicians from southern Spain; and the surmise is plausible that the Homeric word, _molubdos_—lead—-otherwise isolated and unexplained, may have been transferred, by the same agency, from the perishing Iberian to the vigorous Greek tongue.[350] Footnote 350: Schrader, _Prehistoric Antiquities_, p. 217.