For here once more Mycenæ teaches an object-lesson. Innumerable amber beads, of varied sizes, the largest nearly an inch and half in diameter, were found in the graves there. All were perforated, and they had manifestly once been connected together to form necklaces. And the remains of amber necklaces have likewise been disinterred from the archaic tombs of Præneste and Veii,[406] from British barrows, and from a prehistoric necropolis at Hallstadt in Austria. The earliest Italian amber seems to have been conveyed from the Gulf of Lyons along the Ligurian coast; but a subsequent and more lasting stream of supply flowed directly to the Po-delta from near the site of Dantzic. Among the early Italian specimens, are some neck-pendants carved into the forms of apes, necessarily from Oriental models in a different material—most likely, ivory. Footnote 406: _Archæologia_, vol. xli. p. 205. The particular and widespread preference for amber as a means of decorating the throat had a superstitious motive. An idea somehow originated that the substance, thus worn, was potent against malefic agencies, and the persuasion doubtless accompanied it on its travels, and added to its popularity. There is, to be sure, no sign that Homer, though he only employs amber in the fitting shape for its exercise, had any knowledge of this prophylactic power; but then his indifference to rustic lore has repeatedly come to our notice. Penelope, however, and the ladies of Mycenæ, may have been less unconcerned on the point, and perhaps gave some credence to the rumours of mysterious virtue that enhanced the value of the beautiful shining substance from the dim North. That their amber was truly hyberborean has been chemically demonstrated. Fragments of Mycenæan beads, analysed for Dr. Schliemann by Dr. O. Helm, of Dantzic, proved to contain no less than 6 per cent. of succinic acid; and the presence of succinic acid is distinctive, for ‘there has been no instance hitherto,’ Dr. Helm states, ‘of a product physically and chemically identical with the Baltic amber being found in another spot.’[407] The characteristic ingredient in question, for instance, is wholly wanting in Sicilian amber, a fact strongly confirmatory of the historically attested insignificance, in Mediterranean traffic, of small local supplies. Tin and amber thus agree in testifying to the wide extension, westward and northward, of prehistoric trade; yet the first of these far-travelled materials occurs in the Iliad, and is absent from the Odyssey, while the second figures in the Odyssey, but has no place in the Iliad. Footnote 407: Schuchhardt and Sellers, _Schliemann’s Excavations_, p. 196.