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SALAMIS IN THE ISLAND OF CYPRUS.
BY ALEXANDER PALMA DI CESNOLÀ, F.S.A.,
page 44

tombs of military persons, and are not uncommon among Greek relics. They do not often bear inscriptionssuch as this one.1 The figure of a horse, made of a flat plate of lead, and several pieces which appear to have formed parts of a toy-chariot, were also found. It would be hard to determine how old they are.2 The custom of using lead, which, next to gold, is, when not exposed to acid air, the least perishable among the metals employed by the nations of antiquity, is illustrated by the account given, in the subsequent chapter upon the ivory relics, of a finely carved casket of ivory, enclosed in a little box of lead, the form of which suggested that it had been made to contain the other relic.3 Besides this box, there is a second similar one of lead in the collection, which has the form of a large cylindrical box. On being opened, this was found to contain a considerable number of glass drops. Of these, one at least is of a deep sapphire blue, and now incrusted with an iridescent film of oxidised material; another is of a clear, rather dark, brown tint; and a third has a greyish tint. Mr. C. T. Newton, C.B., F.S.A., Keeper of the Greek and Roman Antiquities in the British Museum, informs me that these glass drops must have been used in some popular game. He found numbers of them in the interstices of the stones in a paved passage adjacent to the temple of Apollo at Calymna, the excavation of which is described in his Travels and Discoveries, vol. i. The infiltration of water charged with lime through the space between the lid and body of this box had been sufficient, notwithstanding the extreme narrowness of the interval, to fill the interstices of the drops of glass with fine calcareous matter, exactly such as had, by similar means, filled from the floor to the roof the caves beneath the temple at Kurium, which are said to have contained the most precious part of the antiquities which now enrich the Metropolitan Museum at New York. The drops of glass were thus cemented in a close but friable mass, which crumbled at the touch of the fingers, leaving the drops themselves distinct. It has been conjectured that this little box and its apparently almost valueless Firsts belonged to

1 See Plate VI, fig. 2. 2 Ibid., fig. 1. s Ibid., figs. 14, 15.

the grave of a child, whose toys the pretty little button-shaped drops had been— toys placed in the sepulchre, beside the scant remains of some dear one, who could delight in them no more. There are about thirty drops altogether.1 It has, on the other hand, been suggested that the variously-coloured drops of glass were intended for use by a seal or gem-cutter. A still more curious and important discovery of the use of lead in Cyprus was made at Salamis under the following circumstances. During my excavations in the ancient cemetery of that city, one of the diggers came upon a toy made ofthis metal, and brought it to me. Adjustment of the pieces in position showed that this relic was a rough toy chariot, the two wheels of which are oval, resembling those of the chariot on the celebrated Panathenaicamphora found by Mr. T. Burgon at Athens. The archaic letters on this vase indicate its great antiquity. The strangeness of this fact prompted me to desire the workmen to preserve very carefully whatever leaden articles might turn up in the course of their future labours. The very next day was fruitful in relics of the same kind, and several pipe-like portions of the metal were put into my hands. As these articles did not associate themselves with the chariot-toy, towards which my attention was then directed, I did not give much attention to them at the moment, but laid them aside in a corner of my tent. It must be confessed that, knowing the frequency with which lead was used for water-pipes by the ancients, I hastily concluded that these newly-found objects had been employed for that purpose, or otherwise applied by way of solder, so as to unite frustra of columns with iron pins, or, possibly, to bind shafts of pillars to their bases.

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