Ink.
Ink found at Herculaneum.
For ink, various colored liquids were used, generally black, but sometimes red and sometimes green. The black ink was sometimes manufactured from a species of lampblack or ivory black, such as is often used in modern times for painting. Some specimens of the inkstands which were used in ancient times have been found at Herculaneum, and one of them contained ink, which though too thick to flow readily from the pen, it was still possible to write with. It was of about the consistence of oil.
These rolls of papyrus and parchment, however, were only used for important writings which it was intended permanently to preserve. For ordinary occasions tablets of wax and other similar materials were used, upon which the writer traced the characters with the point of a steel instrument called a style. The head of the style was smooth and rounded, so that any words which the writer wished to erase might be obliterated by smoothing over again, with it, the wax on which they had been written.
Recent discoveries in respect to the Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Such is a brief history of the rise and progress of the art of writing in the States of Greece. Whether the phonetic principle which Cadmus introduced was brought originally from Egypt, or from the countries on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean sea, can not now be ascertained. It has generally been supposed among mankind, at least until within a recent period, that the art of phonetic writing did not originate in Egypt, for the inscriptions on all the ancient monuments in that country are of such a character that it has always been supposed that they were symbolical characters altogether, and that no traces of any phonetic writing existed in that land. Within the present century, however, the discovery has been made that a large portion of these hieroglyphics are phonetic in their character; and that the learned world in attempting for so many centuries, in vain, to affix symbolical meanings to them, had been altogether upon the wrong track. The delineations, though they consist almost wholly of the forms of plants and animals, and of other natural and artificial objects, are not symbolical representations of ideas, but letters, representing sounds and words. They are thus precisely similar, in principle, to the letters of Cadmus, though wholly different from them in form.
Specimen of Egyptian hieroglyphics.
Venus's residence at Mt. Ida.
Here she saw and became acquainted with Anchises, who was, as has already been said, a noble, or prince, by descent, though he had for some time been dwelling away from the city, and among the mountains, rearing flocks and herds. Here Aphrodite saw him, and when Jupiter inspired her with a sudden susceptibility to the power of love, the shepherd Anchises was the object toward which her affections turned. She accordingly went to Mount Ida, and giving herself up to him, she lived with him for some time among the mountains as his bride. Æneas was their son.
Aphrodite's assumed character.
She leaves Anchises.
Aphrodite did not, however, appear to Anchises in her true character, but assumed, instead, the form and the disguise of a Phrygian princess. Phrygia was a kingdom of Asia Minor, not very far from Troy. She continued this disguise as long as she remained with Anchises at Mount Ida; at length, however, she concluded to leave him, and to return to Olympus, and at her parting she made herself known. She, however, charged Anchises never to reveal to any person who she was, declaring that Æneas, whom she was going to leave with his father when she went away, would be destroyed by a stroke of lightning from heaven, if the real truth in respect to his mother were ever revealed.
Childhood of Æneas.
When Aphrodite had gone, Anchises, having now no longer any one at home to attend to the rearing of the child, send him to Dardanus, a city to the northward of Troy, where he was brought up in the house of his sister, the daughter of Anchises, who was married and settled there. His having a sister old enough to be married, would seem to show that youth was not one of the attractions of Anchises in Aphrodite's eyes. Æneas remained with his sister until he was old enough to be of service in the care of flocks and herds, and then returned again to his former residence among the pasturages of the mountains. His mother, though she had left him, did not forget her child; but watched over him continually, and interposed directly to aid or to protect him, whenever her aid was required by the occurrence of any emergency of difficulty or danger.
The Trojan war.
Achilles.
At length the Trojan war broke out. For a time, however, Æneas took no part in it. He was jealous of the attentions which Priam, the king of Troy, paid to other young men, and fancied that he himself was overlooked and that the services that he might render were undervalued. He remained, therefore, at his home among the mountains, occupying himself with his flocks and herds; and he might, perhaps, have continued in these peaceful avocations to the end of the war, had it not been that Achilles, one of the most formidable of the Grecian leaders, in one of his forays in the country around Troy, in search of provisions, came upon Æneas's territory, and attacked him while tending his flocks upon the mountain side. Achilles seized the flocks and herds, and drove Æneas and his fellow-herdsmen away. They would, in fact, all have been killed, had not Aphrodite interposed to protect her son and save his life.
Æneas engages in the war.
The loss of his flocks and herds, and the injury which he himself had received, aroused Æneas's indignation and anger against the Greeks. He immediately raised an armed force of Dardanians, and thenceforth took an active part in the war. He became one of the most distinguished among the combatants, for his prowess and his bravery; and being always assisted by his mother in his conflicts, and rescued by her when in danger, he performed prodigies of strength and valor.
Story of Pandarus.
Æneas rescued by his mother.
Her magic vail.
At one time he pressed forward into the thickest of the battle to rescue a Trojan leader named Pandarus, who was beset by his foes and brought into very imminent danger. Æneas did not succeed in saving his friend. Pandarus was killed. Æneas, however, flew to the spot, and by means of the most extraordinary feats of strength and valor he drove the Greeks away from the body. They attacked it on every side, but Æneas, wheeling around it, and fighting now on this side and now on that, drove them all away. They retired to a little distance and then began to throw in a shower of spears and darts and arrows upon him. Æneas defended himself and the body of his friend from these missiles for a time, with his shield. At length, however, he was struck in the thigh with a ponderous stone which one of the Greek warriors hurled at him, a stone so heavy that two men of ordinary strength would have been required to lift it. Æneas was felled to the ground by the blow. He sank down, resting upon his arm, faint and dizzy, and being thus made helpless would have immediately been overpowered and killed by his assailants had not his mother interposed. She came immediately to rescue him. She spread her vail over him, which had the magic power of rendering harmless all blows which were aimed at what was covered by it, and then taking him up in her arms she bore him off through the midst of his enemies unharmed. The swords, spears, and javelins which were aimed at him were rendered powerless by the magic vail.