The Locrian type of relief takes the form of a square plaque.[419] They are easily recognised by the rough micaceous character of the clay, and by their subjects, which mostly relate to the myth and cult of Persephone. They were probably dedicated in one of her shrines, as were those found on the Acropolis at Athens to Athena. All these reliefs seem to have been impressed in moulds, not modelled by hand, as many of them exist in duplicate. Those from Greece are sometimes coloured. ------------------------------------------------------ PLATE VII [Illustration: TERRACOTTA “MELIAN” RELIEFS, ARCHAIC PERIOD (BRIT. MUS.). ] ------------------------------------ Many little figures in the shape of animals and other objects, such as goats, pigs, pigeons, tortoises, chariots or boats, boys or apes riding on animals, women making bread, and similar subjects, together with jointed dolls or νευρόσπαστα, were evidently used as children’s toys. They have been found deposited with the bodies of children in the tombs of Melos, Rhodes, and Athens. In Mr. Biliotti’s excavations at Kameiros in Rhodes in 1863, one child’s tomb was found containing two of the “Melian” reliefs, small vases of glass and black-glazed ware, a terracotta basket of fruit, and a sea-shell; in another were a bird, two dolls, a child in a cradle, two grotesque figures, a woman playing a tambourine, and two other terracotta figures. The terracotta dolls were cast in a mould like the ordinary figures, but the bodies, legs, and arms are formed of separate pieces pierced with holes, so that they might be joined and moved with strings, like the modern marionettes; hence their name of νευρόσπαστα, “drawn by wires.” They all represent girls, and sometimes dancers with castanets in their hands; they are coloured in the usual manner, and date from various periods between 500 and 200 B.C. Allusion is sometimes made to these figures in the Greek writers—as, for instance, by Xenophon, who in his _Symposium_[420] introduces Socrates inquiring of an exhibitor of these puppets what he chiefly relies on in the world. “A great number of fools,” he replies, “for such are those who support me by the pleasure they take in my performances.” Aristotle[421] mentions dolls that moved their limbs and winked their eyes like marionettes, but this can hardly refer to terracotta figures.[422] * * * * *