The decorative use of amber disappeared from classical Greece. It had been adopted from the East, as part of a semi-barbaric system of ornament, and was abandoned on the development of a purer taste. The substance was, indeed, as Helbig has remarked,[410] ill-adapted for the expression of artistic ideas, and so had little value for those who directed towards the achievement of such expression their best efforts for the ennoblement and refinement of life. No amber, then, is found in the tombs of the Hellenic Greeks, nor in those of the Cimmerian Bosphorus, where the Milesian colony Panticapæum held the primacy. Even in Italy, the once prized product was left to be largely appropriated by Gallic barbarians and Istrian and Umbrian peasants. But the ‘whirligig of time,’ as usual, ‘brought about its revenges.’ As artistic feeling decayed, the favour of amber returned, and it grew under the Empire to a higher pitch than it had ever before attained. Whereupon a cavalier was despatched from Nero’s court on an exploratory expedition to the original and genuine home of the article; direct trade was opened with the Baltic, and the morning mists which had so long enveloped the origin of the ‘sun-stone’ were at length dispersed. Nevertheless, Pausanias, who saw an amber statue of Augustus at Olympia in the second century A.D., still believed the rare substance composing it to have been collected from the sands of Eridanus.[411] Traditional errors possess strong vitality. Footnote 410: Helbig, _Atti dell’ Accad. dei Lincei_, t. i. p. 425. Footnote 411: _Descriptio Græciæ_, v. 12.