Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/380

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
330
TRAVELS AND DISCOVERIES

Prophet Elia and the Temple of Apollo. My only reason for trying this field was its vicinity to that of Jauni Sconi.

I commenced digging in a spot where the outline of two graves might be still distinctly traced on the surface of a footpath. While I was at work, a Greek, whom I had never seen before, came up to me. "I think," he said, "if you dig here" (pointing to one of the graves), "you will find something good." I took his advice; and the workmen had hardly broken the ground with their pickaxes, before they found a small circular ornament in bronze so finely wrought that I was at once led to hope for some work of art of a better quantity than what I had been discovering.

I therefore immediately took the pickaxes from the hands of my workmen, and made them scratch the ground with the small scraping-irons which we were in the habit of using. I very soon found three more of these bronze disks, the handle of a large bronze vase with rich floral ornaments, and lastly, at the very bottom of the grave, but not more than eight inches below the surface, a beautiful bronze group in high relief, representing Boreas carrying off Oreithyia. This group forms the subject of plate 15. Boreas is represented with buskins and large wings as a wind-god; Oreithyia seems to be looking back to the world from which she is snatched away.

Standing over the grave with this group in my hand, I thought of the Eurydice of the fourth Georgic:—

"Invalidasque tibi tendens, heu! non tua, palmas."