466 YOUTHFUL MALE GOD ATTENDED BY GENIUS

ie male

Fig. 390. Rock Crystal

Lentoid from Phigalia ;

Two Genu saluting Male

God.

in an Etruscan tomb at Orvieto. Rossbach rightly recognized the lee '
character of the daemons' heads but owing to careless execution of rl
intaglio, his artist misinterpreted them as heads of bulls, and this feat

has been repeated in subsequent illustrations
of this subject. The object, formerly in the
Castellani Collection,1 has since disappeared 2

The characteristic attitude of the
figure laying his out-
stretched hands on the
heads of the Genii con-
forms with that of the
young male God between
two lions on a lentoid
gem from Kydonia:'
(Fig. 391 bis).

An intaglio in rock
crystal from Phigalia'1 (Fig. 390) shows two opposed
Genii, without ewers, with a central male figure, who
apparently raises his hands to be licked by their long pia jgj Genius
tongues. The rendering of animals with protruding between two Youth-
. ■ c i »»• ful Attendants. Hy-

tongues is a recurring trait of the Minoan engravers ; „„, /„i\

we see it in the case of the wolves, or clogs, of the

hieroglyphic series, and of lions, bulls, and stags on bead-seals and signets.

The legs of the monsters here are abnormally attenuated. It was this,
and similar representations, that suggested to Milchhofer the idea of daemons
with birds' or even insects' legs.5

On the banded cornelian from Hydra6 (Fig. 391) we see the scheme
reversed. The Genius here is essentially of the leonine type but has been
alternatively invested with a horse's or an ass's skin, the youthful mimsteis
being described as subduing it,' probably by the help of incantations '. 'ne
beneficent Minoan daemon did not need to be dealt with in this way.

1 Seen there by Furtwangler in 1884.

2 Dr. A. H. Smith, Director of the British
School at Rome, kindly looked through the
Collection (now in the Villa Giulia), but all
his investigations proved fruitless.

" A. E., Myc. Tree and Pillar Cult, p. 63,
Fig. 43. ' Berlin Cat., PI. I, Fig. 10.

5 Overbeck, Kunslmythologie, iii, 683 seqq.;
Milchhofer, Anfange der Kunst, p. 58 seqq.,

and cf. p. 65, where they are compared «*
locusts and grasshoppers, and mythologi
consequences are drawn from this.

0 Banded cornelian, B.M. Coll., no. 41. «»
cf. J.H.S., 1897, PI. Ill, 5 and p. 6S. Fur-
wangler (A.G., iii, p.38) curiously misintert«
the ministering function of the two attenc. an
—'sie bandigen ihn wohl mit Beschwora „
sie sind seine Plerren \