LATE MINOAN 'CATTLE PIECES' 565

The cattle piece (Fig. 537) consists of two lowing oxen. Purely bucolic
subjects were now the order of the clay quite as much as those clue to a
still surviving taste for the bull-ring.1

Groups of recumbent cattle without either sensational or religious

Fig. 536. Mottled Agate Lentoid :
Crete.

Fig. 537. Sardonyx Lentoid :
Crete.

associations seem actually to have formed part of the decoration on the
palace walls. A design on the gold plate of a ring bezel from Mycenae,
here reproduced in Fig. 538, shows the lower part of a group of two
couchant oxen, in reversed positions between two vegetable shoots,2 on an
architectonic base, the separate blocks of which are clearly delineated.

Group of Two Recumbent Oxen, the Hinder partly outlined : Recurrence
of Stepped Base.
Among compositions of this class, one which, from its constant repeti-
tion, may be thought to depend on some work of the greater Art, is a group
consisting of a recumbent ox with another behind it, of which only the
back of the head and part of the dorsal outline is visible (Fig. 539).3 Here
the natural instinct of the engraver would surely have been to give fuller
value to the hinder beast by depicting the front profile of his head4 as indeed

Fig. 2, p. 67. The type and style recalls the
Macedonian coins of the Edoni and Orrescii
(« 5°° B.C.) where a man—often armed with

Recum-
bent Ox
with an-
other
partly
outlined
behind.

■«'0 spears—stands (between two oxen of
similar broad proportions with folds to their

See, too, I>. o/M., i, p. 687, Fig. 505.
lh.it on the left appears to be a much

I'P

conventionalized lily.

3 This specimen was bought by me in
Athens, but was said to be of Cretan proven-
ance. On this type cf. P. o/M., i, p. 695
and F'ig. 517.

'' This version, in fact, occurs on a sealing
from H. Triada; D. Levi, op. lit., p. 36,
Fig. So.