Schuchhardt and Sellers, _op. cit._ p. 249. No gilt objects are expressly mentioned in the Iliad,[393] but the delineative inlaying of the Shield of Achilles involved the same sort of process as that required for producing them. The Iliadic Hephæstus, however, was somewhat behind his time. For the ‘latest thing out,’ one would be inclined to look elsewhere. He was, as we have seen, unacquainted with iron, and his models were often a trifle archaic. From the very outset of his career, when, as an infant and a foundling, he was cared for by Thetis and Eurynome, the divine artificer appears to have been more dexterous than inventive. Footnote 393: In the adventitious Tenth Book, v. 294, the practice of gilding the horns of victims for sacrifice is, however, alluded to. ‘Nine years,’ he himself afterwards related, ‘with them I wrought much cunning work of bronze; brooches, and spiral armbands, and cups and necklaces, in the hollow cave; while around me the stream of ocean with murmuring foam flowed infinite.’[394] Footnote 394: _Iliad_, xviii. 400-403. But these ornaments were already of obsolete forms. Three of the four kinds mentioned find no place elsewhere in Homeric descriptions, and would probably have struck Homeric ladies as quaint and old-fashioned. They can, however, be more or less plausibly identified with compound spiral brooches and other decorative objects from pre-Hellenic, pre-Etruscan, and Scandinavian tombs.[395] Footnote 395: Gerlach, _Philologus_, Bd. xxx. p. 491; Helbig, _op. cit._ p. 279. The armour of Agamemnon was of foreign manufacture. Cinyras, king of Cyprus, of semi-mythical fame as a metallurgist, had sent it to him, perhaps as a pledge of benevolent neutrality,[396] at any rate, more through fear than love. It was of a highly decorative character, being inlaid and embossed with gold and tin, silver and enamel. Fundamentally, of course, it was, like all Homeric armour, of bronze. Something further will be said about it in the next Chapter. Footnote 396: Cf. Gladstone, _Studies in Homer_, vol. i. p. 189. The Baldric of Hercules, seen by Odysseus in Hades, constituted, one must admit, an incongruously substantial article of equipment for the thin remnant of a hero owning the sway of Persephone. Yet the horrified and shrinking glance with which it is regarded brings it wonderfully into harmony with the sombre vision of the great _eidolon_, pursuing, in the under-world, a career of shadowy destruction. The golden shoulder-belt in question was from the hand of an unknown but exceptionally gifted artist. It was of chased, or repoussé work, and showed no diversity of colouring or material.