[91] χρύσειοι … κύνες, and (100), χρύσειοι … κοῦροι. It is improbable that the poet intends by these descriptions anything more than images of dogs and boys. In support of this view we may (partly with Nitzsch), remark that, (1) A tendency to hyperbolical expressions about works of imitative or mechanical art may be observed in Homer. Such expressions are intended to be a tribute to the skill of the artist. Thus the wheeled tripods, Il.18. 376, are said to move “αὐτόματοι . . θαῦμα ἰδέσθαι”. Even in the description of the “ἀμφίπολοι” ib. 417, we may doubt whether we have more than a hyperbolical account of mechanical contrivances, “ἀμφίπολοι . . ζωῇσι νεήνισιν εἰοικυῖαι”,
“τῇς ἐν μὲν νόος ἐστὶ μετὰ φρεσὶν, ἐν δὲ καὶ αὐδὴ”“καὶ σθένος, ἀθανάτων δὲ θεῶν ἄπο ἔργα ἴσασιν”, for after all they are only “ζωῇσι νεήνισιν εἰοικυῖαι”. To the same tendency may be referred the grandiloquence of Od.11. 613“μὴ τεχνησάμενος μηδ᾽ ἄλλο τι τεχνήσαιτο”
“ὃς κεῖνον τελαμῶνα ἑῇ ἐγκάτθετο τέχνῃ”. (2) Works of imitative art had not yet received their proper appellations, such as “ἀνδριάς”, etc.: see the whole description of the Shield in Il.18, and therein, especially 577 foll. “χρύσειοι δὲ νομῆες ἅμ᾽ ἐστιχόωντο βόεσσι”. Such objects borrowed the names of the things of which they were imitations.
