SCULPTURED TOMBS OF HELLAS
[Illustration]
[Illustration:
PLATE I
_Frontispiece_
]
SCULPTURED TOMBS
OF HELLAS
BY
PERCY GARDNER, LITT.D.
LINCOLN AND MERTON PROFESSOR OF CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY AND ART
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
WITH THIRTY PLATES, AND EIGHTY-SEVEN ENGRAVINGS IN THE TEXT
[Illustration]
London
MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO.
1896
[_All rights reserved_]
OXFORD: HORACE HART
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
Few griefs and many joys my life has held,
Out-lengthened to the utmost bounds of eld.
My name is Symmachus, in Chios born,
Which rich with grapes the branching vines adorn;
But when I died, my bones were hidden here,
In Attic land, to gods and men most dear.
_Athenian Epitaph._
PREFACE
The monuments erected to the dead belong in every country, like funeral
customs generally, to a deeper stratum of the national consciousness
than do openly expressed beliefs. This is, in fact, a phase of the
general law that in the history of religion cultus is more venerable and
more conservative than doctrine. And as, further, the beliefs which find
an expression in literature are those of the most enlightened and the
least conservative spirits, it is misleading if one attempts to learn
from the higher literature of a people how the masses really think and
feel in regard to death and the life which lies beyond death.
These considerations are certainly applicable in the case of Greece. The
two great literatures of Greece, the Epic and the Attic, belong each to
a class, to an aristocracy whether of birth or of talent, and stand high
above the beliefs of the common people. If we wish to ascertain what the
ordinary Greek citizen, _l’homme sensuel moyen_, thought and felt in the
presence of death, whether his own or that of friends, we must
supplement the study of the poets, the orators, and the philosophers by
an investigation of ritual, of burial customs, and of the lines of tombs
which stretched from the gates of many Greek cities on both sides of the
main roads.
The purpose of the present book may best be accomplished if we proceed
to consider in succession, first the burial customs of the Greeks, next
the ideas as to the future life which prevailed among them, and finally
the monuments of the dead.
It is the last-mentioned memorials which are the principal concern of
this book. For a long while English-speaking scholars, and even
tourists, have felt a special interest in the sepulchral monuments which
form so marked a feature of the great museum at Athens, and in the
Dipylon cemetery, part of which still survives. I have tried to set
forth, for scholars and for lovers of art, a concise account of these
monuments, their periods and classes, their inscriptions and their
reliefs. And as an introduction and supplement to an account of the
tombs of Athens, I have added a still slighter account of the tombs of
the pre-historic age in Greece, of the monuments of Asia Minor, of the
tombs of Sparta, Boeotia, and other districts, and of the magnificent
Greek sarcophagi recently discovered at Sidon.
It would occupy much space if I tried here to detail all my obligations
to previous scholars. The whole success of this work must depend on its
due illustration; and though the nucleus of my illustrations consists of
photographs taken for me during a visit to Athens, I have been obliged
also to borrow from a variety of learned and valuable works. In every
case in which I asked permission to copy a published engraving that
permission was courteously granted. If by mischance I have in any case
copied without permission, I trust that I may be pardoned. References to
the sources of engravings will be found at the foot of my pages.
Special thanks are due to Dr. Conze and the German Archaeological
Institute for allowing me to use the plates of their magnificent work,
_Die Attischen Grabreliefs_, which furnishes representations by
photography or drawing of almost all important Attic tombs. Where the
photographs of this work were better than my own, I have in some cases
used them in preference.
To M. Cavvadias and the Greek Government I am indebted for permission to
photograph freely in the Athenian Museums; and to the Trustees of the
British Museum for leave to reproduce two interesting monuments (Figs.
28 & 35) which are hitherto unpublished.
When I have had occasion to quote from Homer and the poets of the
_Anthology_, I have usually attempted a rendering in English verse. For
Greek elegiacs I have used rhymed heroic verse, and for Greek hexameters
English ballad metre. I have also to thank my colleague, Dr. James
Williams, of Lincoln College, for allowing me to use several of his
excellent versions of poems of the _Anthology_.
After careful consideration, I have decided that in a work of this
kind, which does not attempt completeness, but is methodical in
arrangement, the best form of Index is a detailed table of contents and
list of engravings. By the aid of these, anything included in the book
can be very readily found.
PERCY GARDNER.
OXFORD, _August, 1896_.
PS. Most of the abbreviations used in the notes will explain themselves;
but I should explain the following:--
_C. A. G._ (‘Corpus of Attic Grave-reliefs’) is _Die Attischen
Grabreliefs_, ed. A. Conze.
Kaibel, is G. Kaibel, _Epigrammata Graeca ex Lapidibus conlecta_.
TABLE OF CONTENTS AND INDEX
CHAPTER I.
BURIAL CUSTOMS IN GREECE.
Importance attached to burial, 1. The Prothesis, 2; illustrated by
vases, 3. Presence of ghosts, 4. The Ecphora, on archaic vases, 5;
on later monuments, 6. Sleep and Death, 7. Custom of burning, 9.
Funeral feast and speeches, 11.