If at the time of Euripides the Agora was still partly visible above the _débris_, such must have been still much more the case with the ruins of that Cyclopean house, and it is more than probable that tradition pointed to it as the Palace of the Atridæ, in which Agamemnon and his companions had been murdered, and that it was shown under this denomination to Euripides. The objects discovered in this house prove that its inmates had pretensions even to luxury; for in one of the chambers, at a depth of 20 feet below the surface, was found a finger-ring cut out of a splendid white onyx, with a seal, on which are represented in intaglio two animals without horns. At first sight they certainly appear to be hinds, but on attentive examination we see that the artist's intention has been to represent cows; both have their heads turned round looking at their calves, which suck the milk from their udders.[253] Though in a very archaic style, the intaglio is nevertheless well wrought; the anatomy of the animal is tolerably observed, and one feels astonished how it could have been possible to do the work without a magnifying glass. On seeing this intaglio, and reflecting that it belongs to an antiquity preceding Homer by centuries, we are ready to believe that all the works of art mentioned by Homer, such as the wonderful shield of Achilles,[254] the dog and the deer in the mantle-brooch of Ulysses,[255] Nestor's goblet,[256] and others, all existed in his time, and that he merely describes what he saw with his own eyes. Mr. Achilles Postolaccas calls my attention to the most ancient didrachms of Corcyra, of the 7th century B.C., on which a cow is giving milk to her calf, this representation being similar in style to the cows and calves on the onyx ring. [Illustration: No. 213. Fragments of a painted Vase, representing armed Warriors. (5 M.) Size 1 : 3, about.] [Sidenote: A PAINTED VASE.]