The first portion of the armour, that attracts observation, is an elaborately wrought breast-plate, which had come from Cyprus, a seat of Phœnician settlement. We next come to the sword, which I shall presently describe. This is followed by the shield, adorned with many bosses of metal, but also carrying a representation of the Gorgon with the heads or figures of Fear and Panic. This shield must be considered as a work of art; and the same may be said of its band or strap, which carried the figure of a three-headed snake. There is nothing said to connect these works with foreign manufacture. The family of Agamemnon was of a foreign origin comparatively recent; but it may remain an open question, whether these arms are presumptively referable, or not, to a domestic manufacture. The deposits appear, again, to differ extremely in point of merit. I set aside the objects directly symbolical, because, where religion, or idolatry, is in question, excellence in workmanship becomes secondary, or even ceases to be desired. Among the other objects, I gather that none exhibit a very high order of technical qualities. But, if we may rely upon photographic representation, they surely exhibit lively and forcible movement, as well as many of the elements of nobleness, beauty, and fertility of invention; particularly in ornamentation, as distinguished from the representation of life, either animal or vegetable. Some of this diversity may be due to difference of date; some, perhaps much, to the superiority of the immigrant hand, or of imported works. That there were foreigners resident in Greece at the time of the _Troïca_, we have every reason to infer from one conspicuous case, that of Echepolos, a son of Anchises, who was allowed to present the mare Aithè to Agamemnon, as the price of his exemption (_Il._ XXIII. 296) from service against Troy. If there be anywhere in the Poems an account of a work of art produced in Greece or by a Greek, it is the bedstead of Odysseus,[5] wrought by himself (_Od._ XXIII. 190-201); and to him, after a good deal of consideration, I am inclined to ascribe a close connection with the immigrant or Phœnician stock; though this representation might also be due to his unequalled versatility and universality of accomplishment. There was indeed a _Chrusochoös_ or gold-plater at the Court of Nestor (_Od._ III. 425); but the very same man goes by the name of _Chalkeus_ or coppersmith (_Ibid_. III. 432). And it would even seem that working in metals cannot have been a principal or prominent employment in an Achaian community, for no such person is named in the remarkable passage of the Odyssey (XVII. 384) which supplies a sort of list, and where the wood-worker, or carpenter, appears.