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The objects of Oriental Art, which were brought before the eyes of the Greeks by this active intercourse, powerfully stimulated their fancy. The crowd of decorative motives from vegetation, the world of fantastic animals, and the superiority of Oriental Art in the rendering of life, drew Greek vase-painting out of Geometric uniformity and pointed it to new paths.

PLATE XIII.

Fig. 24. ATTIC GEOMETRIC KYLIX.

Figs. 25 & 26. CRETAN JUGS IN THE FIRST ORIENTALISED STYLE.

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AS the Oriental motives pour into the Greek world, a new development begins, which in the details of its course is still hard to grasp, the collision of the native Geometric style with Oriental influence, the fusion of both elements into a new unity, and the growth of the archaic style. In contrast with the quiet and consistent unfolding of Geometric style, the process to anyone who goes deep into its details takes on the character of a restless fermentation, and an almost dramatic tension. It occupies, roughly speaking, the 7th century. Without forgetting how arbitrary divisions in the history of Art must always be, let us here treat as one the period from the end of the Geometric style to the abandonment of filling ornament, the change in technique of clay and colouring, and the formation of the established body of black-figured types.