Therein were ten courses of black cyanus, and twelve of gold, and twenty of tin, and dark blue[425] snakes writhed up towards the neck, three on either side, like rainbows that the son of Kronos hath set in the clouds, a marvel of the mortal tribes of men.[426] Footnote 425: The original has simply ‘of cyanus.’ Footnote 426: _Iliad_, xi. 24-28. The comparison of the snakes to rainbows may possibly refer only to their arching shapes; it is not easy to connect iridescence with a substance just previously noted expressly as _black_. The shield of Agamemnon resembled his cuirass in workmanship, but was diversified as to pattern. ‘And he took,’ we are informed, ‘the richly-dight shield of his valour that covereth all the body of a man, a fair shield, and round about it were twenty white bosses of tin, and one in the midst of black cyanus. And thereon was embossed the Gorgon fell of aspect, glaring terribly; and about her were Dread and Terror. And from the shield was hung a baldric of silver, and thereon was curled a snake of cyanus; three heads interlaced had he growing out of one neck.’[427] Footnote 427: _Iliad_, xi. 32-40. The Mycenæan method of inlaying bronze was followed in the construction of both articles. But the arrangement of the contrasted metals on the cuirass in alternating vertical stripes, although rendered perfectly intelligible by Helbig’s learned discussion,[428] has not been illustrated by any actual ‘find.’ The bosses of tin and cyanus diversifying the shield, on the other hand, correspond strictly to a Mycenæan plan of ornament,[429] and are reproduced in the round knobs of gold and silver attached to the bronze surface of certain Phœnician dishes dug up from the ruins of Nineveh.[430] The Gorgon’s Head, however, does not appear in Greek art until the seventh century B.C.;[431] yet the suspicion of spuriousness thence attaching to the lines in which it is mentioned may prove to be unfounded. The emblem was, at least, a favourite one in Cyprus, having been introduced thither, according to some archæologists, from Egypt. Judging by the evidence of Cyprian terracottas, it figured, surrounded with serpents, very much as on the breastplate of Agamemnon, on the corslets of priests and kings; and it seems to have been specially appropriated by a priestly caste named ‘Cinyrades’[432] to signify their supposed descent from Agamemnon’s dubious ally. The Cyprian partiality thus manifested for the dread device goes far towards proving that genuine products of Cyprian metallurgy were limned in the passages just quoted. Footnote 428: _Das Homerische Epos_, p. 382. Footnote 429: Schuchhardt and Sellers, _Schliemann’s Excavations_, p. 237. Footnote 430: Rawlinson, _Phœnicia_, p. 288. Footnote 431: Furtwängler in Roscher’s _Lexikon der Griech. Myth._; art. ‘Gorgoneion.’ Footnote 432: