Footnote 400: Schliemann, _Mycenæ_, p. 156. Footnote 401: Helbig, _op. cit._ p. 277. Footnote 402: _Ib._ p. 387. Smiths are not included among the Homeric _demiurgi_. The class of persons specially distinguished for their serviceableness to the community is made up of physicians, soothsayers, carpenters, and poets. Nevertheless, there were metal-workers in Ithaca who might have competed in general utility with the best of the native wizards. A smithy, described as a place of common resort, was situated close to the Odyssean palace; and the demand for spears, swords, axes, and knives must have been continual, and was certainly met by a local supply. There is much doubt, however, as to whether objects claiming an artistic character were produced in Ithaca. It seems more likely, on the whole, that the few existing there had been imported from the Peloponnesus. There, presumably, Nestor’s Cup, stated to have been brought by him from Pylos to Troy, was manufactured; and the Brooch of Odysseus might very well have been turned out from the same workshop. It is true that a Peloponnesian origin is never expressly attributed to objects for which particular admiration is sought to be enlisted. Such are either left undetermined, claimed for Hephæstus, or said to have come from Egypt, Sidon, or Cyprus. Achæan was thus plainly ranked below foreign industry. And this in itself indicates a falling off from the ‘golden prime’ of Mycenæ, when Achæan craftsmen were, to say the least, not utterly below compare with those of lands earlier illuminated by the rising sun of civilisation. Hence, products of everyday familiarity to Agamemnon had become strange and wonderful to his _sacer vates_; yet the abounding vitality has not left them. They come before us in his songs, animated with the energy of his thought, fragments of palpitating life, true prognostics of the perfect art which the future was to bring to Greece.