Page:Troy-and-its-remains by Heinrich Schliemann.djvu/77

Homer sings, because I imagined that I had found among their ruins fragments of the double cup, the Homeric "δέπας ἀμφικύπελλον." From closer examination, however, it has become evident that these fragments were the remains of simple cups with a hollow stem, which can never have been used as a second cup. Moreover, I believe that in my memoirs of this year (1873) I have sufficiently proved that Aristotle (Hist. Anim., IX. 40) is wrong in assigning to the Homeric "δέπας ἀμφικύπελλον" the form of a bee's cell, whence this cup has ever since been erroneously interpreted as a double cup, and that it can mean nothing but a cup with a handle on either side. Cups of such a form are never met with in the débris of the first settlement of this hill; but they frequently occur, and in great quantities, among those of the succeeding people, and also among those of the two later nations which preceded the Greek colony on the spot. The large golden cup with two handles, weighing 600 grammes (a pound and a half), which I found in the Image missingNo. 1.
Fragment of painted pottery from the lowest stratum (16 M.). royal treasure at the depth of 28 feet in the débris of the second people, leaves no doubt of this fact.^[1]

The terra-cottas which I found on the native rock, at a depth of 14 meters (46 feet), are all of a more excellent quality than any met with in the upper strata. They are of a brilliant black, red, or brown colour, ornamented with patterns cut and filled with a white substance; the flat cups have horizontal rings on two sides, the vases have generally two perpendicular rings on each side for hanging them up with cords. Of painted terra-cottas I found only one fragment.^[2]