But this style did not put out everywhere equally fine flowers. It was not, like the late Mycenean, an ‘imperial’ style, but, from the first--and this is significant for Greek art--differentiated and conditioned by locality; each region had its own manufacture of vases, and its own Geometric style. Already the lead is taken by that place, which later was to drive out of the field all competitors, viz., Athens. The Dipylon vases--the name usually given to Attic Geometric vases from the fact that most of them were found in the cemetery before the Dipylon Gate,--rise in form, technique and decoration to the greatest perfection and highest richness. In the magnificent amphoræ, as much as two metres in height, which are worthy of their monumental use as tomb decoration, the Geometric style perhaps reaches its culmination; in the so-called black Dipylon vases, often only sparingly decorated on the shoulder or neck and otherwise covered black, we get already an effect of colour which became popular much later; the stock of forms is ampler, the maeander more developed, the delight in telling a story and in representing a scene greater than in other Geometric styles. Beside the Dipylon there is a second site in Attica, Eleusis, though not so important; Boeotia too must be mentioned, the pottery of which makes a provincial impression, and is dependent in forms, patterns and subjects on Attica and the Aegean islands, as also that of the neighbouring Eretria in Euboea. The prototypes of the big Boeotian and Eretrian amphoræ with high stem and broad neck have been found particularly in Delos and Rheneia, richly ornamented vases ‘de luxe,’ in which the painting is laid on a white slip. In the same place, where the cult of Apollo had a great attraction, several other Geometric classes were also found, among them the precursors of the art which flourished in the 7th century and which is usually ascribed to the island of Melos. On the Delian vases horses and human representations occur, but generally in this class there is a disinclination to represent figures. The same disinclination and the frequent use of a light slip characterize the pottery of the Dorian island of Thera, which developed a very definite though sober and monotonous Geometric style that seems to have obstinately persisted till well into the 7th century. The rich finds of other classes bear witness to an active trade with the mainland, other Cyclades, and the Ionic East, the pottery of which has many points of contact with the Cycladic. We know it from Miletus and other places on the Asiatic coast, but above all from the island of Rhodes. The Rhodian Geometric vases are distinguished from the Cycladic by the absence of the light slip, and seem in spite of many points of contact never to have reached the same level. An isolated vegetable ornament, the so-called palm-tree, points to relations with Cyprus. Cross-hatched rhombi and birds are very much