MINOAN ORIGIN OF CLASSICAL H1PPOCAMP 953

oils of Skylla herself were certainly borrowed from it.1 Its contributions
the Classical Hippocamp have long been recognized and are well illus-

Fig. 922. Hippocamp ridden by Nereid hearing Achilles' Sword.

tratedby Fig. 922, depicting one ridden by a Nereid.'2 What is strange is
that a marine species, hardly bigger than a large prawn, should have been
magnified by popular fancy into a
monster—such as to-day haunts
Caledonian seas unknown to the
little Hippocampus itself.

It certainly was not for nothing
that the bark on which the Goddess
is seen navigating" the waves on
these signets should bear the head
of a sea-monster, clearly based, as
we learn from the ' Ring of Minos ',
on this 'stickle-backed' marine creature. Like the Greek'Queen of the Sea V!
Amphitrite—who seems to have taken over something of her mythic being
—she, too, is here clearly indicated as Mistress of such sea monsters.

In close relation again to the preceding, though without the Hippocamp
prow, is the design on another gold signet-ring found near Candia, Fig. 923,

Compare especially the Akragantine type, Already, in the Odyssey, Amphitrite" appears as

h.M, Cat. Greek Coins, p. 12, No. 61. in a special manner mistress of sea monsters;

xleydemann,, Nereiden mit den Waffen SeA<£u'us re mva.% re feat et ttoBi ftei(ov lAijcnv J

Acfulh, PI. ij (seej l00j g gauer, in Roscher /oyros a jivpU jS6o-ku dyacnwos 'A^it/h't?? (Od.

'■"■}, xii. 96, 97).
AAos flatriXeia: Oppian Halieutika, I. 39 r.

Fie. 923. Gold Signet-ring prom Candia.