s. A few examples have been here selected to show
how these types were combined with symbols and conventional imitation.

In the British Museum is a vase, No. 1257, engraved (Lenormant et De
Witte, Mon. Ceram., i. pl. 27), of which the subject is, Europa crossing
the sea on the back of the bull. In this design the sea is represented
by a variety of expedients. First, the swimming action of the bull
suggests the idea of the liquid medium through which he moves. Behind
him stands Nereus, his staff held perpendicularly in his hand; the top
of his staff comes nearly to the level of the bull's back, and is
probably meant as the measure of the whole depth of the sea. Towards the
surface line thus indicated a dolphin is rising; in the middle depth is
another dolphin; below a shrimp and a cuttle-fish, and the bottom is
indicated by a jagged line of rocks, on which are two echini.

On a mosaic found at Oudnah in Algeria (Revue Archeol., iii. pl. 50), we
have a representation of the sea, remarkable for the fulness of details
with which it is made out.

This, though of the Roman period, is so thoroughly Greek in feeling,
that it may be cited as an example of the class of mythography now under
consideration. The mosaic lines the floor and sides of a bath, and, as
was commonly the case in the baths of the ancients, serves as a
figurative representation of the water it contained.

On the sides are hippocamps, figures riding on dolphins, and islands on
which fishermen stand; on the floor are fish, crabs, and shrimps.

These, as in the vase with Europa, indicate the bottom of the sea: the
same symbols of the submarine world appear on many other ancient
designs. Thus in vase pictures, when Poseidon upheaves the island of Cos
to overwhelm the Giant Polydotes, the island is represented as an
immense mass of rock; the parts which have been under water are
indicated by a dolphin, a shrimp, and a sepia, the parts above the water
by a goat and a serpent (Lenormant et De Witte, i., tav. 5).

Sometimes these symbols occur singly in Greek art, as the types, for
instance, of coins. In such cases they cannot be interpreted without
being viewed in relation to the whole context of mythography to which
they belong. If we find, for example, on one coin of Tarentum a shell,
on another a dolphin, on a third a figure of Tarus, the mythic founder
of the town, riding on a dolphin in the midst of the waves, and this
latter group expresses the idea of t