_Iliad_, v. 583. Homer’s name for ivory is identical with ours for the beast producing it for our benefit. And the word _elephant_ is held to be cognate with the Hebrew _aleph_, an ox. Hence the designation came to the Greeks almost certainly from a Semitic source. It was exported, we may unhesitatingly say, from Phœnicia with the wares it served to label. No Homeric crux has been more satisfactorily disposed of by actual exploration than that relating to the identity of ‘cyanus,’ or ‘kuanos.’ In later Greek, the term was of perfectly clear import. It signified lapis lazuli, either genuine or counterfeit. But the simple hypothesis of a continuity of meaning was met by difficulties of two kinds. The first regarded colour, always a perplexed subject in the Homeric poems. For uniformly, throughout their course, ‘cyanean’ betokens darkness of hue, if not absolute blackness. The epithet frequently recurs, and only once with a possible, though doubtful suggestion of _blueness_. It is never used to qualify the summer sea, a serene sky, the eyes of a fair woman, or the flowers of spring. Usually, the idea of sombreness, pure and simple, is unequivocally attached to it. As when Thetis, in sign of mourning, covers herself with a cyanus-coloured robe, ‘than which no blacker raiment existed.’[424] Invisibility and the shade of approaching death are each typified as a ‘cyanean cloud’; the brows of Zeus and Heré, the waving locks of Poseidon, the mane of the Poseidonian steed Areion, the gathering tempest of war, are of ‘cyanean’ darkness; the beard of Odysseus, the raven curls of Hector, bear the same adjective, which cannot well be construed otherwise than as a poetic equivalent for _black_. Nor is there any ground for supposing that it meant to convey any special shade or quality of blackness. Fine-drawn distinctions of every kind are totally alien to the spirit of Homeric diction. Footnote 424: _Iliad_, xxiv. 94. The second objection to identifying cyanus with lapis lazuli or ultramarine related to function. The uses to which it is put in the Iliad and Odyssey seemed, to anxious interpreters, inconsistent with its being either of a stony or of a glassy nature. ‘Cyanus ordinarily enters into the composition of the polymetallic works described in their verses. It forms, for instance, a dark trench round the tin-fence of the vineyard represented on the shield of Achilles; and it is especially prominent in the decoration of the armour of Agamemnon. Cinyras, king of Cyprus, was the donor of this magnificent equipment; not through pure friendship. Intimidated by the Greek armament, he probably dreaded being compelled to take an active share in the enterprise it aimed at accomplishing, and purchased with a personal gift to its supreme chief, liberty to retain his passive attitude of ‘benevolent neutrality.’ The breastplate alone was a ransom for royalty.