It has been conjectured that the imperfect transparency of laminæ, whether of horn or ivory, caused those materials to be associated with the shadowy forms of dreamland; but the apportionment of their respective offices was plainly determined by a play of words unintelligible except in the original Greek.[421] And it must be admitted that scarcely a worse pair of puns could be produced from the whole of Shakespeare’s plays than those perpetrated by our ‘bonus Homerus’ in a passage replete, none the less, with poetical suggestions largely turned to account by his successors. Footnote 420: _Odyssey_, xix. 562-67 (Worsley’s trans.). Footnote 421: See Hayman’s _Odyssey_, vol. ii. p. 361. It is scarcely likely that complete tusks ever found their way to archaic Greece, yet the comparison—used twice in the Odyssey—of purely white objects to ‘fresh-cut ivory,’ decidedly proves a working acquaintance with the material. Its creamy tint was, in Egypt and Assyria, constantly set off by skilful intermixture with ebony; but ebony formed no part of the Homeric stock-in-trade. One cannot but be struck by finding that, in the Iliad, ivory is employed _only_ for embellishing equine accoutrements, but in the Odyssey, _only_ for purposes of domestic decoration. So far as it goes, this circumstance tends to reinforce the contrast of sentiment towards the horse apparent in the two poems. Thus, a species of art practised, we are given to understand, exclusively by foreigners, helps to conjure up more vividly the effect of the rush of crimson blood over the white skin of the fair-haired Menelaus: ‘As when some woman of Maionia or Karia staineth ivory with purple to make a cheek-piece for horses, and it is laid up in the treasure-chamber, though many a horseman prayeth to wear it; but it is laid up to be a king’s boast, alike an adornment for his horse, and a glory for his charioteer.’[422] And the simile was adopted by Virgil to expound a blush. Footnote 422: _Iliad_, iv. 141-45. Indum sanguineo veluti violaverit ostro Si quis ebur. Ivory-staining does not seem to have been in vogue outside of Asia Minor. Tablets of ivory were, at Nineveh, often inlaid with lapis lazuli, and ornaments of ivory were gilt; but there are no surviving signs of the application to them of colouring matters. The second mention of ivory in the Iliad is in connexion with the slaying, by Menelaus, of Pylæmenes, chief of the ‘bucklered Paphlagonians,’ when it is said that Antilochus simultaneously smote his charioteer Mydon with a great stone on the elbow, and ‘the reins, white with ivory, fell from his hands to earth, even into the dust.’[423] The overlaying, in a decorative design, of leathern bands with small slips and rosettes of ivory, may here doubtless be understood; and a similar fashion of lending splendour to horse-trappings can, as already pointed out, plausibly be inferred to have prevailed at Hissarlik. Footnote 423: