That there was some not distant relation between the sepulchral art of

Phrygia and that of Mycenae cannot be denied. It would however be a

mistake hence to leap to the conclusion that the art of Mycenae was of

Phrygian origin. It appears that the remains which come to us from

Mycenae are earlier by several centuries than those which we find in

Phrygia. It might even be suggested that the stream of art flowed rather

in the opposite direction, from Mycenae to Phrygia. A more reasonable

view, however, is that the art of Phrygia and that of Mycenae were not

mother and daughter, but rather cousins, derived alike from some stem of

Asiatic art which has yet to be traced out.

More interesting, because more full of human meaning, are the sculptural

adornments of the early tombs of the district of Lycia in southern Asia

Minor. Early Greek tradition shows a close relation subsisting between

Lycia and Peloponnesus. There is a well-known Homeric story which tells

how Bellerophon, the descendant of Aeolus, was sent to Lycia by Proetus,

who desired that he should there be slain at the hands of the Lycian

king, his father-in-law; and how nevertheless Bellerophon prospered in

Lycia in all that he undertook, slaying the Chimaera, and overcoming the

hosts of Solymi and Amazons. Glaucus, the grandson of Bellerophon, and

Diomedes of Argos meet under the walls of Ilium as cousins. And

tradition connected the name of the Lycian Cyclopes with the mighty

walls of Tiryns and of Mycenae. The genealogies of the legends are no

doubt quite untrustworthy, yet they are often confirmed as indications

of race by other evidence. And there is, as we shall see, so near an

analogy between the monuments of Lycia and those of Peloponnesus that we

are obliged to assume between the two countries also some connexion.

When we consider the series of Lycian tombs, which may be studied better

in the British Museum than in any other museum of Europe, we find a most

interesting blending of Oriental and Greek elements[68]. Their

architecture is local; the main feature of it being that it renders

directly, in stone and in rock, forms which are clearly in origin

wooden. Everywhere we see the square beam as it were petrified. In the

roof of the ordinary Greek temple we see that the forms were thought out

while the building material was still wood, and only modified when stone

took the place of beams. In the Lycian tombs this feature is still more

notable, because the Lycian architects lacked the nimbleness of the

Greek intellect, and were more conservative of settled forms. The

sculptures which adorn these curious constructions have also local

elements, but in this field the art of Ionia comes in as a controlling

force in the sixth century, rendering the native customs and beliefs in

forms to which the student of Greek art is accustomed. It may be that

our familiarity with the forms and style of the sculpture in some degree

misleads us. When we know the words of a language we sometimes too

hastily think that we are masters of its thought. The religion and the

customs of Lycia may resemble those of Greece less closely than the

monuments would lead us to think. But in ancient times art influenced

custom as well as custom art. In the present state of our knowledge we

cannot regard the early monuments of Lycia as outside the pale of Greek

art.

There are indeed, as M. Perrot has well shown, among Lycian archaic

monuments a few which seem to precede the Ionic influence. Such is the

square chest of the British Museum[69], on one side of which is a lion

strangling an ox, on another side a lioness with her cubs, on the third

a man slaying a lion, and on the fourth a group of horsemen and

warriors on foot. The lion-slayer in particular takes our thoughts not

to Greece but to Egypt and Assyria. Many of the tombs which do show

Ionic influence are not suggestive in the present connexion. Their

sculptural adornment is such as we might expect to find as soon on a

temple as on a tomb; satyrs, animals, sphinxes and the like. We will

here consider only a few monuments, the sculpture of which seems to be

really sepulchral in character.

Incomparably the most interesting of the archaic grave-monuments of the

Xanthus valley is the beautiful tomb called the Harpy Monument, the

reliefs of which now adorn the British Museum, having been brought

thither by Sir Charles Fellows. When complete the tomb was in the form

of a square tower of masonry about twenty feet high, which was

surmounted by a small chamber, wherein doubtless in ancient times lay

the bodies of those to whose honour the whole was erected, together with

the riches heaped around their biers. This chamber reminds us of the

tomb of Cyrus, as described by Arrian[70]. ‘Below,’ writes Arrian, ‘it

was built of squared masonry in the form of a four-sided tower, on which

was a chamber roofed with stone, having a narrow door to it, through

which a man of no great stature could with pain and difficulty pass. In

the chamber stood a golden coffin wherein was buried the body of Cyrus,

and beside the coffin a couch with feet of beaten gold, whereon was laid

a coverlet of Babylonian carpets, and below purple rugs. On these was

placed a candys and other garments of Babylonian workmanship: also

Median trousers and robes of hyacinth dye, some of purple, some of other

colours; and torques and swords, and gold earrings set with stones.’

Similar, though no doubt less splendid, may have been the contents of

the Harpy Tomb; and it is noteworthy that in it also there is a small

opening at the side, intended not for the entrance of men, but either

for admission of dues of food and drink, or more probably to give free

ingress and egress to the ghosts of the dead. The Persians and the

Lycians must have been of kindred stocks; and we may well suppose that

their burial customs would be similar.

The reliefs which decorate the outer faces of the Harpy Tomb are among

the most charming memorials of antiquity. In spite of a certain crudity

and poverty in design, which is discovered on a close inspection, the

style in its elegant and graceful conventionality is very attractive.

And the difficulty which exists in the identification of the figures of

the reliefs, and the determination of their meaning, adds an

intellectual fascination to that which is aesthetic. (See Fig. 27.)

On the side which faces the west we find the door already mentioned,

over which is a figure of a cow suckling her calf. At the two ends sit,

face to face, two dignified female figures. They are clad alike in the

Ionian dress with long sleeves, but in attributes they differ. The

figure to the left holds a vessel of offerings; a sphinx supports the

arm of her chair; she is severe in type and solitary. The figure to the

right holds in her two hands flower and fruit; the bar of her chair ends

in a ram’s head. Three votaries approach her, whereof the first is busy

with her drapery, the second carries flower and fruit, the third bears

an egg. It is clear that the lady on the right is more approachable; her

flower and fruit, and the ram’s head, all symbolize the genial abundance

of life in nature. The libation-vessel of the lady to the left, and her

sphinx, seem to belong to the grave rather than to life.

Let us pass to the other three sides of the tomb. The central group of

each of them represents a seated male figure receiving offerings from a

votary, also male. But the motive of the groups and the age of the

votaries varies. On the east, a young boy brings an egg and a cock to

an elderly man who holds a flower and a sceptre: a Triton supports the

arm of his chair. On the south, a youth carries a dove to a clumsy

figure who holds fruits. On the north, a warrior brings armour to a

bearded personage, beneath whose throne is a bear. The flanking figures

on the east side are merely more votaries with offerings. But on the

north and south sides we find the remarkable beings from whom the tomb

takes its name, strange monsters having the head, arms, and breasts of

women, but the tails and feet of birds, who carry each in her arms a

young girl clad in long drapery. In the corner of the north side is a

woman, who sits in an attitude of grief.

[Illustration: FIG. 27. NORTH AND WEST SIDES OF HARPY TOMB.]

Such are the details of reliefs, the precise import of which will

probably never be recovered, unless a new light dawns on Lycian customs

and religion. Earlier explanations saw in the winged figures the Harpies

or storm-winds bearing away the daughters of Pandareus, according to a

well-known tale of the _Odyssey_[71]. But an objection to this

interpretation at once arises from the fact that the girls who are being

borne away cling lovingly to their captors, and show neither dread nor

anger. Hence it has appeared more reasonable to find in them souls of

women gently carried by guardian spirits to the land of the future. In

the seated male and female figures, it has been proposed to find the

deities of the Lycian race, though who these were is not clear. If the

seated ladies be goddesses, it seems clear that they must preside

respectively over life and death. Yet it would be very bold so far to

Hellenize them as to call them Demeter, the impersonation of the

fruitful earth, and Persephone, queen of the shades below.

The most recent explanation of the reliefs, first propounded by

Milchhoefer, regards them as memorials of the worship, not of the gods,

but of the heroized dead. Certainly they in some points nearly resemble

the Spartan reliefs, of which we shall treat in the next chapter, and

which do beyond doubt belong to the hero-worship of Lacedaemonian

families. The offerings, too, in the hands of the votaries, the flower,

the fruit, the egg, and the cock, are such as were brought in Greece to

the tomb, and such as are figured in the Spartan monuments. No offering

could be more appropriately offered to a deceased ancestor, in an

artistic representation, than the armour which was sometimes in early

days placed, in Greek and Asiatic graves, on the head and the breast of

him who had worn it during his life; and in later days was sometimes

attached to his tomb. And however we interpret the winged figures, we

can hardly make them other than the ministers of death, a fact which

seems to strike a keynote with which all the rest of the explanation

must harmonize.

Yet when we try to explain the sculptures as memorials of Lycian

ancestor-worship we soon come to difficulties. On the stelae of Sparta

we find a pair, ancestor and ancestress, or the ancestor alone. On Attic

tombs we do not find more than a family group. But here, on the monument

of Xanthus, there are five detached seated figures, three men and two

women. What kind of a group of ancestors will these form, and why are

they separate? In the little seated lady of the north side one is

tempted, on the analogy of mediaeval paintings, to see the dedicator of

the whole tomb. But this again is uncertain. In the whole matter we walk

like the Mystae at Eleusis in the dark, seeing only vague forms and

hearing words which we cannot interpret.

To the winged figures with their prey we may certainly find an analogy

in the Sirens of the Athenian monuments (see below, Chap. VIII). The

Siren was with the Greeks a sepulchral figure, and signified a death

gentle rather than violent. The small beings in their arms on the

Xanthian monument are almost certainly souls, which Greek art often

represents as of very small size.

The Siren, in her ordinary Greek form, is found on another Lycian

monument, which has not hitherto been engraved. In the British

Museum[72] only the gable end of this tomb is preserved. In the midst of

it is a column of Ionic type, though not of the ordinary form, on which

stands the Siren of whom we speak. She is clad in a short chiton, girt

at the waist, with loose sleeves. Though the wings and legs are those of

a bird, she has human arms, outstretched. On either side of the column

sits a figure: on the left a beardless elderly man, on the right a

bearded man; each holds a staff, and extends the unoccupied hand. These

two dignified men appear to be the heroes to whom the tomb belongs; and

the Siren represents the mourning of the survivors. Here, even more than

in the Harpy Tomb, we seem within the range of Greek conceptions and

Ionic art.

[Illustration: FIG. 28. GABLE OF LYCIAN TOMB.]

Another monument[73], probably not much later than 500 B.C., was adorned

with what appears to be a funeral procession--old men in chariots, young

horsemen, and armed men marching. One of the venerable figures in the

chariots holds in one hand a flower, in the other apparently a cup,

symbols which we shall presently see to have a decidedly sepulchral

signification. Another fragment of archaic Lycian work in the British

Museum[74] represents a woman standing at the foot of a couch, whereon

it appears that a man reclined, for one of his feet is visible; but

whether alive or dead we cannot be sure. But we must not linger over

these fragments, though they might repay a more careful and detailed

study. The threads which we are now obliged to drop, we shall regather

when we treat of the tombs of Athens, and of the monuments erected by

Attic artists on the coast of Asia Minor.

CHAPTER VI

SPARTA

The group of grave reliefs which constitutes our record of the customs

and beliefs of the Lacedaemonians in regard to the tomb, a group which

is inferior to few sets of ancient monuments in historical interest, has

not very long been known to the world. Attention was first called to it

in 1877 by Drs. Dressel and Milchhoefer, and it has since then found a

place in all the histories of sculpture.

Of these reliefs the most important and the best preserved is now in the

Museum of Berlin. It was found at Chrysapha near Sparta. It is

represented in one of our plates (II), from which representation it is

possible to gain some notion of the fashion of its carving, which is

remarkable, and has been generally considered to indicate a hand or a

school more versed in the carving of wood than in the sculpturing of

marble. As in the carving of an onyx, we find several distinct planes

one behind the other, on which are respectively projected the different

parts of the relief, the outlines of each part being slightly rounded,

and the inner markings graven in shallow lines with a tool. The face and

arm of the nearest figure project most from the background; next, his

body; and so on, layer beyond layer, to the ground of the relief. The

style is rude, hard, and vigorous; though the capacity of the artist is

narrowly limited, he moves within his limits with

[Illustration:

PLATE II

_Page 76_

]

firm steps. The date of the work is probably the latter part of the

sixth century.

Perhaps even more striking than the style of the relief is its subject.

Seated side by side, no doubt on two chairs, though one only can be made

out, are a pair, a bearded man who faces outwards and who holds in his

right hand a winecup, and a woman, who bears a pomegranate in her right

hand, while with the left she draws forward her veil. Both figures are

fully clad. Behind the pair is erect a bearded snake; before their knees

we see advancing two smaller figures, male and female, bringing as

offerings a cock and an egg, a flower, and a fruit.

In the same volume of the Athenian _Mittheilungen_ (ii), in which this

relief was originally published, may be found photographs of other

reliefs which closely resemble it in character, but show small

differences in period and detail. On Plate 24 is a relief wherein the

snake is wholly wanting: on Plate 23 the snake is transposed, being

erect in front of the wine-cup, and the style of the work is decidedly

more advanced: on Plate 22 a dog appears beside the seated pair.

These four reliefs then make up a strongly defined group; and before we

turn to other reliefs of the Spartan class, it may be well to determine

what meaning may be assigned to the representations which they exhibit.

We may begin by rejecting without hesitation some of the theories on the

subject which might naturally be suggested by a first impression. The

wine-cup in the hands of the male figure might dispose one to think of

Dionysus and his consort Ariadne; but this explanation would leave the

serpent and other features unexplained, nor have we reason to think that

the cultus of Dionysus had struck deep roots at Sparta in early times.

Again, the serpent might suggest Asklepius with his daughter Hygieia,

since the healing deity commonly carries a staff round which a serpent

twines. But to this explanation the winecup offers difficulties; and,

again, the evidence for a local cult at Sparta is insufficient.

Far nearer to the mark is the view which Dr. Milchhoefer accepted, that

in the dignified seated pair we have embodied the deities of the world

of shades. The wine-cup would in that case refer to the frequent

offerings of wine made to the shades below; and the serpent is the

well-known companion and friend of the dead. We are not well informed as

to the names borne at Sparta by the king and queen of the world of the

dead. At Argos they were not so well known by the Homeric names of Hades

and Persephone, which they commonly bore in Greece, as by the names of

Klymenos and Chthonia. But in fact the pair were known by many names in

various places.

An interesting terra-cotta (Fig. 29) from Locri in Italy[75] presents a

group at first sight nearly resembling the seated pair of Sparta. We

find on it Hades and his Queen seated side by side: he is wreathed and

holds flowers; she carries a cock and ears of corn. This is valuable

evidence, and shows that in southern Italy monuments of the class we are

considering might well belong to the worship of the recognized deities

of the nether world. But a closer consideration shows that at Sparta the

worship took another and a less generalized form, natural to a race

among whom ancestors were held in special and unusual honour.

Though Hades and his Queen are frequently mentioned in sepulchral

inscriptions, they are but rarely figured together in sculpture. A

comparison of two or three other stelae of Sparta will suggest at all

events a modification of the view that the seated pair of the reliefs

already mentioned are merely the rulers of the world below. In the

fourth volume of the Athenian _Mittheilungen_ are published two reliefs

which beat

[Illustration: FIG. 29. HADES AND PERSEPHONE.]

important inscriptions. On one is represented a man wrapped in a cloak

seated: in his left hand is a pomegranate; in his right a wine-cup, out

of which a coiled serpent drinks. The stone bears the name ΤΙΜΟΚΛΗϹ. If

this inscription were of the same date as the relief it would of course

at once prove that the stone is a memorial of an individual, and not a

dedication to Hades. But in the opinion at least of Prof. Furtwängler

the inscription is decidedly the later; it cannot therefore be regarded

as conclusive evidence. But such evidence is afforded us by the next

monument. Here we have a bearded man seated, in a decidedly later and

more finished style of art, holding in his right hand a wine-cup, from

which a serpent feeds. The inscription here is ΑΡΙΣΤΟΚΛΗϹ Ο ΚΑΙ ΖΗΘΟϹ;

and it seems not merely to show that the memorial belongs to a man,

Aristocles, but also that this Aristocles received a second name after

his death in the quality of hero or demi-god. We learn from other

sources of several such heroic names bestowed on distinguished men after

their death. The rarity of names on the Spartan tombs may be readily

accounted for by the existence of a stern law of Lycurgus[76], that

names were not to be recorded on the tombs except in the case of

priestesses, or of warriors who had fallen in battle. Another regulation

of the great lawgiver ordained that bodies might be buried within the

city, and memorials of the dead set up in the neighbourhood of the

temples. Such monuments were not always gravestones, but sometimes

memorials of those who were buried in a different place, or had fallen

on foreign service.

In view of such facts as these we cannot hesitate to see in the

sepulchral reliefs of Sparta reference to individuals, the ancestor, or

the ancestor and his wife. They are the shrines of the family worship of

the Laconians. But yet in a sense the dead man is identical with Hades.

In Egypt each of the virtuous dead became part of Osiris. According to

Herodotus the Getae thought that their dead returned to their deity

Zalmoxis. In Greece, by dying, men put away the individual accidents of

the flesh and became in a sense united with Hades. This no doubt is one

reason why down to the second century B.C. we scarcely ever find

individual portraits on tombs, a fact to which we shall hereafter

return.

The cultus of ancestors was closely parallel to that of the gods. To

both, sacrifices of food and of drink were constantly brought. To the

temple of the gods corresponded the family heroum or shrine. To the

statues of the gods corresponded the representation of the human dead in

an ideal or heroized form. And gods and ancestors alike partook with

their votaries of food at stated times, becoming the guest-friends of

the worshipper.

Regarding the relation of the Spartan stelae to the cultus of ancestors

as certain, we may proceed to consider in the light of that connexion

the meaning of various details of the reliefs. The thing that is perhaps

of the highest interest in them is the high honour paid to women.

Ancestor and ancestress sit in state side by side, and are approached by

their descendants, the smallness of whose figures is intended to portray

the humility of their approach to their heroic progenitors. That

ancestor-worship should find a special home at Sparta need not surprise

us. We know that respect for elders and for parents was almost as

strongly rooted among the conservative Laconians as it is in our days

among the Chinese and Japanese. An exhortation to be worthy of their

predecessors was the appeal which most readily stirred the hearts of the

Spartan spearmen. They lived under the shadow of the past to an extent

which we can hardly realize. But it is scarcely so familiar a fact that

Sparta was the city in all Greece where women were held in highest

honour. The Athenians inherited something of the Ionian desire for the

seclusion of women, and to the contemporaries and countrymen of

Thucydides it seemed high praise of a woman to say that she was never

talked of. At Sparta, on the other hand, in some of the great crises of

history, women are prominent in the foreground, from the days when

little Gorgo saved her father Cleomenes from being bribed, to the days

when Agiatis stirred up a later Cleomenes to his projects of political

reform. The Spartan education, which seemed to regard women as only of

use for bearing children to uphold the State, can scarcely have aimed at

a high intellectual ideal. Modern German writers are fully convinced

that sharing the exercises and games of the men must have rendered

Laconian women coarse and masculine. Yet the Spartan ladies had a great

share in the ownership of land; Spartan nurses were sought for in all

Greece for the rearing of boys; and we learn from Plutarch that in all

matters the Spartans were ready to take the advice of their women, and

looked on their approval as the highest of rewards. On this regard for

women among the Laconians, the treatment of women in their sepulchral

reliefs is an excellent commentary.

The offerings brought to the seated pair in the relief first cited are

such as belonged in a special way to the dead. The pomegranate was the

food of the Shades, which, when Persephone had tasted in the palace of

Hades, she belonged to him beyond recall. The cock and the egg are the

simplest meat-offerings which were brought to the dead and enjoyed by

the living. Flowers in all countries and in all ages have been laid on

the tomb; and the Greeks who loved to deck their banquets with them were

not an exception to the general rule. The winecup in the hand of the

seated hero may be characterized as a very broad hint to his descendants

that at the tomb were due the libations which were grateful alike to the

gods and to the spirits of the dead. The serpent who is sometimes

represented as drinking from the cup is either the companion of the dead

or even his spirit in another form. The way in which a serpent

disappears into the ground marks him out as essentially a chthonic

being.

A few more characteristic specimens of this class of monuments must be

cited. On a stele from Chrysapha (Fig. 30) we see a man, depicted in an

archaic style of art, seated, holding winecup and pomegranate; at his

feet leaps a dog, while a horse is depicted in relief in the background.

In discussing this relief Dr. Furtwängler[77] advocates the view that

horse and dog have a symbolical reference, the horse being

[Illustration: FIG. 30. SEATED HERO.]

nearly connected with Hades and the dog with Hecate, both mythologic

beings closely connected with the dead. I have proposed[78] a somewhat

bolder view, that these animals sculptured on the stone bear the same

relation to the mortal horse and dog which had belonged to the hero that

the portrait bears to himself, and that they are really a survival of an

ancient custom, whereof we find traces in the graves of Greece and

Italy, by which the horse and dog of a deceased warrior were slain and

buried in the same place with him. Whether their bones were mingled with

their master’s, or whether they are merely figured on his gravestone,

the meaning is much the same, that wherever the lord is, there are his

faithful attendants: ‘Admitted to that equal sky, his faithful dog shall

bear him company,’ as Pope says. In any case, horse and dog on a tomb

are certainly a mark of knightly rank.

Among many proofs that the animal companions of the hero had reference

rather to his occupations and necessities than to any symbolism, the

evidence afforded by a grave at Tanagra[79] seems worth citing. Although

that grave is of a period later than Alexander the Great, it seems to

preserve early Greek ways of looking at death and what lies beyond. The

interior of this grave contained paintings of the head and neck of a

horse, a sword and a loom, besides a house and various articles of

furniture. Here the paintings seem closely to represent what might at an

earlier time have been the contents of the grave. The horse and the

sword belong to the husband, the loom to the wife, whether we are to

consider these as reflections of the past life of the pair or as an

accompaniment of their ghostly existence. The furniture and the house

are provision for their spiritual need of a domicile, just as in the

graves of Egypt we find paintings of the life of the house and farm,

there placed to break the shock of death, and provide for the shadow of

a departed landlord a shadow of his past employments[80].

We pass to the representations which serve to bridge the gap between the

grave-monuments of Sparta and those of other districts. Among the

Spartan reliefs published by Milchhoefer, the following occupy one

plate[81]:--

A female figure, seen from the waist upwards, clad in a chiton, holding

in her left hand a tall flower.

A youth, standing, clad in a chlamys; he holds a staff in one hand, in

the other a cake or fruit; before him a snake erect.

Both of these are of quite early style: with the latter of them we may

compare the following in the Museum at Athens[82]:--

[Illustration: FIG. 31. STELE, MAN FEEDING SNAKE.]

Man standing wrapped in a mantle; in his left hand a pomegranate, in the

right a winecup, out of which feeds a serpent coiled and erect.

In these instances we approach the ordinary representation of the dead

as standing, so common on the tombs alike of Athens and of Northern

Greece, numerous instances of which will be found in the ninth chapter.

Yet the snake, the flower, the pomegranate, all belong to the special

cultus of the dead; and there is not in these cases a reference to the

past life, as is probably the case with the great majority of Attic

stelae.

CHAPTER VII

HEROIZING RELIEFS

Before we proceed further, one distinction of importance has to be made.

It will be found that all the sepulchral monuments of Greece belong to

one of two classes:--

1. Actual tombs, whether temples, or tables, or slabs hewn to be let

into the ground.

2. Commemorative tablets. These may readily be distinguished in form,

because their width is greater than their height, whereas in the true

grave-stele, the height is greater than the width. They were made

usually not to be fixed into the ground of the cemetery, but to be set

up in chapels or mounted on walls in its neighbourhood. An example will

be found in Pl. III. These slabs have a closer relation to actual cultus

than have the gravestones. Their likeness in shape and in composition to

tablets dedicated to the deities is obvious. In fact they belonged to

the chapels and shrines sacred to the worship of heroes and exalted

ancestors, rather than to the ordinary dead.

When we proceed to trace down the lines of descent of the memorials of

ancestor-worship from Sparta in various districts of Greece, we shall

find that some of these lines lead us to groups of actual tombstones,

but more usually they lead to dedicatory reliefs, closely connected with

the cultus of the dead, but not usually coming from actual cemeteries.

One line takes us to the so-called sepulchral banquets of Athens. The

best specimen of these reliefs, found at the Piraeus, and dating from

the end of the fifth century, is represented in our plates (Pl. III). It

has passed by the absurd name, The Death of Socrates. On a couch,

supported by cushions, reclines a bearded citizen, holding in his hand a

cup, and apparently pouring the libation with which the Greeks preluded

their feasts. At his feet sits his wife, occupied, like many of the

ladies represented on Athenian tombs, in admiring a necklace, which she

holds in both hands, or possibly a wreath, for the object itself, having

been represented in colour and not in the marble, has disappeared. A

young slave as cup-bearer is occupied in fetching wine in a jug from the

huge _crater_ or mixing bowl which appears on the left of the relief;

beneath the couch a dog is occupied with a bone. On the right of the

scene there enters a bearded man, of smaller stature than the reclining

hero, who raises his hand out of the folds of his himation in a fashion

which to the Greeks implied adoration.

At the first glance there seems but small likeness between this scene of

domestic feasting and the stiff Spartan reliefs. Yet when we compare the

two in detail, we find that the differences between them lie in the

different customs of varying ages, and in the artistic rendering, rather

than in the signification. Let us make the comparison.

In the Spartan relief the hero is seated, in the Athenian reclining.

Here we have an illustration of the well-known fact that during the

historic age the Greeks changed their custom from sitting at meals, as

do the Homeric heroes, for a reclining posture. The habit of lying at

meals, awkward as it seems to us, was a result of growing luxury. It had

long, as we know from the reliefs of the Assyrian palaces, been

customary in the East. Fig. 32[83] shows King Assur-bani-pal and his

Queen

[Illustration:

PLATE III

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feasting in their palace, in the seventh century B.C. From the East, the

custom spread to the Ionians of Asia Minor, and thence to Greece itself,

with other traits of Ionian luxury.

An archaic relief from Tegea (Fig. 33)[84] seems to mark the point of

transition in Hellas from the seated to the reclining position. Although

only the feet of the hero are seen, yet these feet sufficiently prove

that he was extended on a couch. His wife draws forward her veil;

between husband and wife is a youth holding a wreath, in regard to whom

it is not easy to say whether he is the child of the pair, or merely a

cup-bearer, or an adorer.

[Illustration: FIG. 32. ASSUR-BANI-PAL AND QUEEN.]

It is a consequence of the assumption of a reclining position by the man

in the reliefs, that the woman must be separated from him. In the

somewhat unrestrained vase-paintings of Euphronius and his

contemporaries we frequently find women reclining at table with men and

sharing their cups. But these, as the disorder of the scenes clearly

shows, were hetaerae, slaves of abandoned character. No wife, and no

self-respecting concubine would even be present at a Greek banquet. When

a husband dined at home, his wife might be present, but would probably

not take a share in the repast. She would sit opposite her husband, to

cheer him with her talk. But for a Greek wife to sit like the Queen of

Assur-bani-pal drinking wine, and pledging her lord in a cup, would be

an impossibility. Alike on the Tegean and the Athenian relief she is

wholly occupied with her dress, like a true daughter of Greece. The

Spartan wife had more in common with her husband.

[Illustration: FIG. 33. STELE FROM TEGEA.]

Another marked divergence between the Spartan and the Athenian relief

lies, so to speak, in its tense. In the former, the past is set aside,

and we find allusion only to the life beyond the grave. The snake, the

pomegranate, the offerings, all have reference to the status of the dead

as hero and as an associate of the nether gods. But the Athenian relief

might at first sight be supposed to be an excerpt out of daily domestic

life. There is no symbolism, no exaltation. Husband, wife, and slave may

have met thus a hundred times in their ordinary life on earth. In this

we find the influence of the ordinary spirit of grave-reliefs at Athens,

which, as we shall see in a future chapter, dwells on and draws from the

past daily life rather than the more ghostly life of the future.

Yet a clear indication which unites the two classes of representation is

furnished by the votaries who appear in both alike. They are in the

Spartan relief very small in stature; a naive way of indicating how far

below the hero they rank. The votary of the Athenian relief is scarcely

smaller than his ancestral hero. Yet his presence is an undoubted proof

of the connexion of the monument with actual worship. On many of the

later representations of banquets, this is further emphasized by the

introduction of the well-known symbolism of ancestor-worship. In some a

snake is depicted in the foreground. In others a horse’s head appears in

the background. In others the superhuman character of the hero is

indicated by the lofty crown, which belongs to the god of the lower

world, Hades or Sarapis, and which appears on the head of the reclining

hero[85].

The Spartan monuments were probably in many cases set up as tombstones

over the actual graves of ancestors. But the Athenian banqueting reliefs

were not usually on tombstones, more often on memorial tablets preserved

in chapels devoted to the cultus of the dead. This their shape clearly

indicates. All tombstones are almost of necessity higher than they are

broad, usually tall and narrow. But the banqueting reliefs are oblong in

the opposite direction, broader than they are high. This difference

indicates a different use and destination. In fact they come rather into

line with the reliefs which belong to the worship of civic or local

heroes, or those set up by grateful votaries in the shrines of Asklepius

and other healing deities, than with the immediate memorials of the

dead.

[Illustration: FIG. 34. COIN OF BIZYA.]

The likeness between some of the votive monuments of Asklepius and the

ordinary sepulchral banquets is so close as to have caused considerable

confusion. The Asklepian reliefs appear to borrow of set purpose much of

the symbolism which belongs to ancestor-worship. As an instance we

engrave (Fig. 34) a coin of Bizya, a Greek city of Thrace[86], struck in

the reign of Philip the Arab. On the reverse of the coin we see

Asklepius reclining on a couch, against which rests his serpent-twined

rod. His daughter or wife Hygieia is seated beside him; a human

attendant brings in a wine-jar. The accessories, a coat of mail hung on

a tree, a shield suspended from the wall, a horse who trots in from the

right, are among the ordinary features of sepulchral banqueting reliefs,

and seem inappropriate to a peaceful and non-equestrian deity like

Asklepius. Such contamination of one class of monuments by another, such

transfer of symbols from one artistic field to another, is among the

common phenomena offered by Greek art.

We have now reached phenomena which require careful consideration. We

have found that there is no clear line of distinction to be drawn

between banqueting reliefs which were set up in honour of dead persons

and reliefs which belong to the cultus of heroes, and even of deities

who partake of the nature of heroes, such as Asklepius. It is always

difficult in dealing with ancient monuments to separate the particular

class of which we propose to treat from other classes which are akin to

it in origin and in meaning. It is always necessary at last to draw a

somewhat arbitrary line, and to adhere to it for the sake of order and

method.

In Greek cultus and belief there is no broad distinction to be made

between the veneration paid to the more noteworthy of those who were

recently dead, and the worship accorded to local and national heroes,

Theseus and Orestes, the Dioscuri and Asklepius. In a sense, all the

dead were heroes, and any of them might become a worthy object of

periodic sacrifice, proprietor of a sacred domain, and lord of a

priesthood. I have already (Chap. II) dwelt on these facts from the

point of view of custom and cultus; it remains to show their working in

the field of art.

In dealing, not with actual gravestones, but with the oblong reliefs

which had a closer relation to cultus, and were dedicated only to the

more distinguished of the dead, it is quite impossible to distinguish

clearly those which were set up in honour of recognized mythic heroes,

from those which belonged strictly to the cult of ancestors. Sometimes

the inscription may help us to a decision, or sometimes we may find

direction in the place where the relief is found. Apart from these

external indications, those offered by the relief itself are usually

ambiguous.

That some of the banqueting reliefs were set up in honour of persons

recently dead may be proved[87]. Indeed, in later times, such scenes not

unfrequently decorate actual tombstones. This being the case, it is

reasonable to assume that the great majority of them belong to tribal

and family worship. They were set up, not usually at the tomb, but in

shrines and heroa in the neighbourhood of the cemetery, or in the

chapels of deities or heroes; sometimes, perhaps, in private houses, to

be a constant reminder to the survivors.

In an early and interesting sepulchral relief in the British Museum[88]

we have an unusual group. On a couch there recline an old man and a

young, doubtless father and son, while a second son leads in a horse.

This relief may serve as a transition to another class of oblong

cultus-reliefs. The cult of heroized ancestors does not find its only

memorials in Greece in the reliefs in which they are represented as

seated or reclining. There is another group of monuments in which they

appear as horsemen, or as leading horses.

The connexion of the horse with the heroic dead, whencesoever the notion

may have arisen, was certainly in some districts of Greece very close.

Milchhoefer has shown[89] how the sculptural evidence indicates that

this connexion was closest in Thrace and Northern Greece. And this is

but natural. The aristocracies of Thessaly, of Boeotia, and other

northern parts of Greece were essentially equestrian; whereas in

Peloponnesus the horse, being unsuited to the rugged mountain paths, was

comparatively rare. The strength of a Thessalian army lay in its

cavalry; the strength of a Spartan army in its array of spearmen. To a

horse-loving race it was natural to think of the mighty dead as

horsemen. Even at Sparta the national heroes, the sons of Zeus, Castor

and Pollux, were essentially riders; and on monuments they seldom appear

without their steeds. Still more close is the connexion between heroes

of Northern Greece and their horses.

A great deal of learning has been expended by a variety of

archaeologists to prove that the horse, when he appears in the

sepulchral banquets and the present class of reliefs, is of chthonic

signification; that he belongs mythologically to the gods of the world

below, and to mortals assimilated to them[90]. It may be doubted whether

they have proved their case. Hades is in Homer κλυτόπωλος, in allusion

to the dread chariot in which he bore away Persephone[91]; but he does

not appear as a rider. The wild rider or hunting ghost is familiar in

northern lands, but not in ancient Greece. It seems preferable to take

the simpler explanation, that a chief accustomed all his life to riding

would scarcely be supposed to lack a horse in the fields of Hades. We

have ancient evidence that the presence of a sculptured horse beside a

sculptured man showed his knightly rank in the _Athenian Constitution_

of Aristotle[92], where we are told that a statue of one Diphilas on the

Athenian Acropolis, which was set up to mark his rise to the knightly

rank, had a horse standing beside it.

Several extant monuments show how the god-like heroes of Northern Hellas

came as horsemen to receive the tribute of the living. And this kind of

monument spread from the north into other parts of the Greek world.

One of the earliest and most typical of these reliefs is in the British

Museum[93] (Fig. 35). It comes from Rhodes, and may be dated about 400

B.C. In it we have a combination in three figures of the three elements

which in this class of monuments are almost universally mingled. First,

there is the hero himself on horseback. Next, there is a female figure

of stature equal to or greater than his own[94], who meets him and pours

him a cup of wine. Thirdly, there is a worshipper on a somewhat smaller

scale, who does homage.

[Illustration: FIG. 35. HORSEMAN RELIEF, BRITISH MUSEUM.]

Another relief of about the same period, from Tanagra, (Fig. 36), shows

us a varied group[95]. Beside his horse the hero stands, clad in chiton

and mantle, holding out a flat cup or patera, which a lady standing in

front of him fills from a wine-jug. A square altar stands between the

two, towards which, in attitude of adoration, approaches a man,

represented on a smaller scale, with his wife and two children. The

inscription above is Καλλιτέλης Ἀλεξιμάχῳ ἀνέθηκεν. Dedicated by

Calliteles to Aleximachus. Whether Aleximachus was a recognized local

hero, or only an ordinary dead man raised by Calliteles to heroic rank,

cannot be decided with certainty.

[Illustration: FIG. 36. HORSEMAN RELIEF, BERLIN.]

Another very similar relief is figured in the fourth volume of the

Athenian _Mittheilungen_[96]. It is from Thebes. The hero stands,

holding a lance in one hand, and in the other the usual flat cup, the

patera. From the right seven figures approach. The first is the lady who

pours wine, and behind her are six worshippers, who bring in a pig and a

fowl for sacrifice. The sepulchral character of the relief is emphasized

by placing a tumulus just in front of the horse, and in fact under his

forefoot.

Another relief, in the Museum of Berlin[97], is similar in most

respects; but the lady of tall stature here stands behind the horseman,

and instead of paying him homage, seems to receive it in common with him

from a train of approaching votaries. A large serpent erect in the

background is the friend and companion of the hero.

There can be no question as to the association of these reliefs with

worship, since the preparations for sacrifice are actually represented

on them. But in many directions they offer us a series of interesting

problems.

Firstly, is the hero who is thus honoured merely an ordinary dead person

raised at death to heroic rank, or is he one of the local heroes who

were everywhere in Greece held in honour, mythic founders of cities or

ancestors of tribes, or healing and oracular demigods like Amphiaraus

and Trophonius? No doubt, in many instances, the heroic horseman of the

reliefs is of this latter class. Yet that a man recently deceased is

sometimes the recipient of honour is proved by the inscriptions in some

cases, and may be almost with certainty inferred from the presence of

the tumulus on the relief last described. On the monuments the hero is

represented in the bloom of early manhood; but of course it does not

follow that he died young: immortal bloom belongs to the hero after

death, however worn and wrinkled age may have left him.

Secondly, who and what is the lady who on the reliefs pours wine? Her

stature, which is equal to that of the hero himself, and far greater

than that of the worshippers, shows at once that she is no living mortal

or descendant, but a person of equal rank with the horseman. As a matter

of artistic tradition we can trace her genesis quite clearly, as has

been well shown by Furtwängler[98]. On the Spartan stelae we found

ancestor and ancestress seated side by side. When the reclining position

supersedes that of sitting, the wife necessarily moves from her

husband’s side and sits opposite to him. It is a variety of the same

motive when the husband sits or stands and the wife pours him wine, a

group found on several stelae[99], one as early as the Persian wars, and

very commonly in the paintings of Greek vases, from quite an early

period. The motive of wine-pouring being thus thoroughly established in

Greek art, could easily be transferred from one kind of group to

another. It may have been that in some cases the hero had no wife, or he

may have had several successively: that would make no great difference,

as the idea of the group is fixed. As Furtwängler expresses it: ‘Il

importe d’insister sur le fait que nous sommes ici en face d’une forme

artistique, qui avait pour objet d’exprimer une conception de ces

puissances souterraines dérivée d’un des principaux usages de leur

culte.’ This is a far more reasonable explanation than that of some

writers, who fancy that the wine-pouring lady is a kind of Houri, or

nymph of Paradise, who awaits the hero in the next world to recompense

him with her embraces for the pains which he has in this world undergone

for the good of mankind.

Thirdly, what is the relation between these heroic reliefs and the

numerous reliefs and paintings on Attic stelae in which the deceased is

represented as riding on a horse? Several of these we cite below in

Chapter IX. Some points of difference between the two classes of

monuments are obvious. The heroic reliefs are broad, shaped like votive

tablets: the Attic reliefs are tombstones of upright shape. In the

votive reliefs the wine-pouring consort is seldom absent, and votaries

are usually present. In the Attic reliefs the horse is merely one of the

adjuncts of daily life, and the rider is represented in the guise of his

ordinary existence. In fact, as we shall see when we reach the ordinary

Attic reliefs, the figure of the horseman, when it occurs on them, is

merely a characteristic portrait of a man who in his life had been fond

of horses, and perhaps won victories with them at the great sacred

festivals.

Nevertheless, it would be very rash to say that the heroic and the

ordinary horseman reliefs had no influence on one another. For example,

a relief at Tanagra[100] seems to fall exactly between the two classes.

On it a horseman in armour rides, followed by an attendant who holds the

tail of the horse, as was the way of Greek body-servants. A female

figure meets the pair with wine-jug and cup. Here, if the relief belongs

to the one class, the servant is out of place; if to the other class,

the pourer of wine. Probably, being oblong in form, it is really of the

heroic class, but contaminated by the influence of the other. On an

ordinary sepulchral slab in the British Museum[101], the horseman and

servant recur, but the lady is absent.

In recent years an immense quantity of votive terra-cottas has been

discovered on the site of the Dorian colony of Tarentum. These

illustrate in a striking fashion the monuments of the Spartan

mother-city. They consist mainly of two groups.

In the first group we see a man, bearded or beardless, wearing a tall

crown, reclining on a couch, often holding a wine-cup. Beside him is

seated a woman, sometimes bearing in her arms a child, who stretches out

his arms towards the man. We engrave (Fig. 37) a specimen of the

class[102], in which, however, the child does not appear, but instead,

in the background, a horse, who seems to be drinking from the flat cup.

And this horse connects the first group with the second, which consists

of figures of riding horsemen.

[Illustration: FIG. 37. VOTIVE TABLET, TARENTUM.]

Mr. Arthur Evans, who has had the advantage of studying these

terracottas at Tarentum[103], is disposed to maintain that the group

represents, not deceased persons, but rather the deities of the lower

world, Dionysus, Cora, and Iacchus. ‘The terracotta representations here

found must be rather regarded as primarily connected with the cult of

chthonic deities and national heroes, than with that of departed human

spirits,’ though ‘the starting-point may be regarded as purely

sepulchral.’ Dr. Wolters, on the other hand[104], connects the

representations far more closely with the worship of the dead. But after

all, the opposition between these two opinions is not fundamental.

Probably at Tarentum, as at Sparta, the dead ancestor and ancestress

were regarded as scarcely distinguishable from the king and queen of the

world of shades, into whose being they passed at death. Thus the last

note struck in the monuments of Dorian hero-worship is in complete

harmony with the first.

[Illustration: FIG. 38. HERO ON FOOT.]

There are also reliefs in which the heroic character of the deceased is

indicated, not by the horse, but by the presence of armour and arms. In

some states wealthy and well-born citizens were content to fight on

foot, and the position which had seemed to them dignified during life

was preserved by them in the unseen world. A good example from Attica

(Fig. 38) is given in the text[105]. The hero stands on the right,

helmeted; his shield rests against the wall. A dignified lady of the

same stature as the hero pours him wine; between the two is an altar: on

the left is a votary of small size. These groups may serve to remind us

how often in Greece, in the hour of stress and danger, ancestral and

local heroes appeared amid the ranks of the fighting men, and turned the

tide of battle in favour of their descendants or townsfolk.

[Illustration: FIG. 39. HERO SEATED.]

Finally, the hero may even appear in the reliefs unarmed, as an ordinary

citizen. On a relief from Patras[106] (Fig. 39) he is seated on a throne

almost with the dignity of Zeus, a sceptre in his raised hand, a shield

hung on the wall above him. His consort stands behind the seat, while

from the left there advances a train, men, women, and children, making

the well-known gesture with the raised hand which implies adoration, and

bringing a ram for sacrifice. A horse’s head appears above through a

square opening, the part standing, as so often in these monuments, for

the whole. This relief bears a very close likeness to those found in the

sanctuary of Asklepius on the side of the Acropolis hill at Athens;

indeed, if the hero had held a staff entwined by a serpent we should not

have hesitated to identify him as Asklepius. But in the absence of that

attribute we are probably justified in considering him to be some local

hero of Patras, either mythical or historical.

CHAPTER VIII

ATHENS: PERIODS AND FORMS OF MONUMENTS

In regard to the laws which regulated the erection of monuments of the

dead, and the forms which those monuments assumed in successive ages,

under the influence of custom and belief, our information does not reach

far beyond Athens. At Athens alone have we been so fortunate as to find,

beneath the soil, a considerable part of an ancient burying-ground,

where not the graves only, but also the monuments erected over them, are

untouched by the spoiler, and almost as fresh as they were when Athens

was a powerful city. It will therefore be well worth our while to

consider the history of the Athenian monumental customs, which have been

carefully studied on the spot by several able archaeologists.

Graves of the Mycenaean age have been discovered in Attica, at Sparta,

and at Menidi. Of such graves we have already spoken. At an uncertain

period, probably about the eighth century, there succeeded, in place of

these, the graves found in such numbers just outside the Dipylon gate of

Athens, and so called Dipylon graves. The pottery found in these

burying-places is very interesting, although the devices are rude,

because there are painted upon it representations from the contemporary

life of Greece, the prehistoric Greece of the age of Homer and of

Hesiod. The most ordinary pictures are sea-fights, or else the burial

of the dead. Of the representations of Greek obsequies which these

vases bear we have had occasion to speak above[107]. The reason for the

selection of the subject belongs to the present connexion.

The time appears to have been one of poverty and of depression in art.

The rich treasures and the admirable talent for decoration which

belonged to the Mycenaean age lay buried in the past. The Greece which

we know, the historic Greece of art and poetry, of philosophy and

history, had not yet come into being. The moon had set and the sun had

not risen, and men moved in the dimmest twilight. Thus it can scarcely

surprise us that the graves of the Dipylon class, with their poor and

scanty contents, were surmounted by no sculptured monuments. In place of

a column or a slab, there stood on the graves one of the large amphorae

of the period, enriched with adornment of geometric patterns and lines

of stiff animals. Into these vessels were poured, almost beyond doubt,

the offerings of food and drink brought by survivors and descendants.

The choice of a sepulchral subject for the vases is thus readily

accounted for. The vessel rested probably on a mound of earth, such as

the χῶμα, of which we shall presently speak, or on a simple pedestal of

stone.

As we approach the historic age of Athens, the stone monument with its

painting and reliefs makes its appearance. It is not difficult to divide

into periods the history of the production at Athens of monuments of the

dead. It falls quite naturally into three sections:--

(1) The time before the Persian wars, 550-480.

(2) The time of perfected art, 480-300.

(3) The Hellenistic and Roman age.

The epic custom of Greece was to erect over the dead a τύμβος or mound,

with a στήλη or gravestone[108] placed upon or beside it. Such a custom

was continued in later Greece in the case of great graves made after a

battle to contain the bodies of the slain. The tumulus at Marathon is

well known to visitors to Greece, and the lion set up to crown the mound

at Chaeroneia, where the Theban sacred band was cut to pieces by the

phalanx of Philip, still exists in fragmentary condition. But for the

graves of private persons the lavish customs of the heroic age in Greece

gave place to more modest ways.

A passage in Cicero’s _De Legibus_[109] gives us some interesting

information in regard to Athenian customs. Solon, Cicero tells us,

legislated only against the violation of tombs, not against their

sumptuousness. But some time after, in consequence of the growth of

splendid tombs in the Cerameicus, a law was passed, forbidding tombs

more elaborate than could be made by ten men in three days. Nor were

they to be decorated with plaster[110], nor were Hermae to be set on

them. Notwithstanding, after a time, the luxury of tombs again

increased; until Demetrius Phalereus (B.C. 317-307) carried a law that

no monument should be erected save a column not more than three cubits

in height, or a flat slab, or a water-vessel[111]. A magistrate was

appointed to see that the decree was complied with.

The legislation of Demetrius does appear, as we shall presently see, to

have been successful. If the earlier legislation mentioned by Cicero was

effectual, it must be placed in the days of the democracy which

succeeded the expulsion of the Tyrants or in the stirring times of the

Persian wars. For there is a decided dearth of sepulchral monuments at

Athens in the first half of the fifth century. In the latter half of the

sixth, and again in the latter half of the fifth century, they are

numerous and elaborate. Whether Cicero’s words, ‘aliquanto post

Solonem,’ can be stretched to cover a period of nearly a century may,

however, be doubted.

[Illustration: FIG. 40. ACHILLES AT TOMB OF PATROCLUS.]

We have evidence that during the latter part of the sixth century, the

τύμβος the στήλη, the mound and the slab, persisted side by side. Often

a grave would be marked by both; sometimes one or the other would be

wanting. In the course of time the mound has usually disappeared, while

the slab often remains. But it is easy to prove that the mound was

common to early periods. Not only do we find mention of it in a variety

of authors[112], Herodotus, Plato, Lucian, Pausanias, but its form is

depicted upon black-figured vases. We give an instance (Fig. 40) in

which Achilles is represented as dragging the body of Hector tied to his

chariot beside the mound which represents the grave of Patroclus[113]:

a serpent and the shade of Patroclus appear. Here the tomb is a white

mound of oval form, whence it may be judged that in place of a mere

mound of earth sometimes an artificial structure was built, and a recent

discovery at Athens fully confirms this view. In the Piraeus street were

found in 1891[114] remains of an erection about two yards in diameter,

which consisted of a framework of tiles overlaid with fine stucco, and

which seemed originally to have been in the shape of the upper half of

an egg. This was clearly just such a tomb as is figured in the

vase-painting: and doubtless in antiquity such mounds were common, but

they perished easily, or might very commonly be destroyed by careless

workers in the course of excavation. At Myrina Messrs. Pottier and

Reinach found the contents of tombs in many cases lying on the surface

of the ancient soil; a fact for which they account by saying that these

objects must originally have been covered by a mound.

On the mound would in some cases be set the commemorative stone. In

other cases in this period also, as we learn from vase-paintings[115],

an earthenware vessel was set on it to receive offerings. Sometimes we

find in the representations mound and stele set side by side. And

sometimes there is a third feature of the tomb, a τράπεζα, or table,

that is, a horizontal stone. In one remarkable vase-painting[116] we see

clearly mound, stele, and table. More commonly we find the stele and the

table only; the latter being used as a seat by the dead person, or

sometimes serving as a place of deposit for baskets of wreaths and other

offerings. See, for example, Fig. 11, p. 22.

The ordinary stele was in shape a tall and tapering slab, surmounted by

an acanthus pattern. On the face of it were commonly the names of those

buried, and, as a rule, two rosettes. In our frontispiece, which

represents a part of the cemetery of the Cerameicus in its present form,

may be seen several stelae; and one is figured in the text (below, Fig.

43) as an example. The rosettes seem to represent the two breasts, and

we may here see a hint that the stele takes the place of a

portrait-figure, just as does the turban which commonly surmounts modern

Turkish tombs.

In the sixth century the stele is commonly adorned with a portrait of

the deceased in low relief; but sometimes a painted portrait takes the

place of one in relief.

Not all stelae, however, were of tall and narrow form, nor was the

device on them always limited to a single figure: groups sometimes make

their appearance, and to accommodate them the stele has to be made

broader. This development we will trace in the next period. Meantime we

must say a few words as to the pillar (κίων) which is frequently

mentioned as well as the stele in ancient epigrams. The small round

pillar, carved with a simple inscription, which is so abundant at

Athens, belongs to the later age of the city. But in early times pillars

were frequently set up on graves, and surmounted with a portrait or

figure of some kind. As examples we may cite the supposed grave of

Orpheus in Pieria, which was marked, according to Pausanias[117], by a

pillar surmounted by a hydria; and the grave attributed to the sons of

Oedipus, Eteocles and Polynices, on which stood a pillar supporting a

shield[118]. On the grave of Aristomenes at Messene also was a pillar to

which the ox, annually destined to be sacrificed to the hero, was

tied[119]. At a later time the grave of Epaminondas was marked, like

that of the sons of Oedipus, by a pillar supporting a shield, and that

of Isocrates by the figure of a siren, standing on a pillar 30 cubits

high. The oldest existing specimen of a sepulchral pillar is from the

tomb of Xenares in Corfu.

The terms σῆμα and μνῆμα, which are frequently applied to the tomb both

in existing epitaphs and in the epigrams of the _Anthology_, do not seem

to refer to any special form of monument, but rather to the purpose of

the tomb as a significant monument (σῆμα) or as a memorial (μνῆμα).

Every one who examines the early graves of Attica must be struck with

the fact that whereas it would seem natural that tombs should be set up

by children for their parents, at Athens the opposite rule seems to

prevail. Commonly tombs profess to be erected for those who died young

by their sorrowing relatives. Not only were young men who fell in battle

honoured with fine monuments, but young men who died of disease, and

unmarried girls. A large proportion of the women whose tombs we find

seem either to have died unmarried or else to have perished in

childbirth. It would seem that ordinary citizens, who died in the course

of nature, were buried in great family vaults; but that separate tombs

with fine sculptural decoration were erected in special cases, when a

father lost a promising and beloved boy or girl, or a young husband lost

at one blow his wife and his hope of a progeny to carry on his name and

tend his old age. The erection of a tomb to relative or friend was no

matter of course, but an exceptional proceeding, adopted when feeling

ran strongly, and required some satisfaction in outward act. The stern

law of Sparta allowed only the names of men who fell in battle or women

who were priestesses to be publicly set up. At Athens feeling took the

place of law; and while those who died for their country were sure of

honourable burial, ornate tombs were the gifts of special affection. We

are told that the effeminate people of Agrigentum erected special tombs

to their horses and pet birds. Here, as in so many cases, the Athenians

maintained the human mean, between harsh rigour on the one hand, and

luxurious effusiveness on the other.

To the second period, B.C. 480-300, belongs the great mass of the fine

sepulchral monuments of Athens. In the age of Pheidias, the custom comes

in of flanking the sculptural group of stelae with a pair of pilasters

supporting a small gable, as seen in several of our plates, and by

degrees the ground between the pilasters recedes, and a deep interior is

seen, as in Plates XI, XXVI, &c. By this recessing is produced the

monument in the form of a small and shallow temple, within which we see

in very high relief some scene from the daily and domestic life of

Athens. These are the most splendid of the Athenian tombs, in date

almost confined to the fourth century. They are the monuments of which

Cicero writes; ‘amplitudines sepulcrorum quas nunc in Ceramico videmus’:

even in Cicero’s time they were evidently one of the great sights of

Greece; how much more notable are they now, when we have but a wreck of

the artistic wealth and splendour of Greece with which to compare them!

It has been sometimes supposed that the temple-like form of these tombs,

whence they are called ναἰσκοι, indicates special veneration for those

to whom they are erected. If houses in form like those of the gods are

given to mortals, surely, it may be said, the mortals are raised almost

to the rank of the gods. This view, however, is mistaken. The

architectural forms which we associate with Greek temples are not

originally peculiar to them. It is only because the temples of Greece

have survived the secular buildings that we are disposed to look on

pillars and gables as belonging specially to the gods. We have, however,

still a few secular Greek buildings, such as the Propylaea of Athens;

and we see them to be constructed on similar architectural principles

to the temples. The Ionic and Doric styles of architecture were no more

exclusively religious in use or origin than was Gothic architecture in

England. The ναἰσκοι were not temples, but merely a framing for a

domestic interior, such as is often represented on vases. They are rooms

of the women’s apartments in Greek houses. A dead lady in the

_Anthology_ calls her tomb οἰκία λάϊνα[120].

About contemporary with the introduction of the ναἰσκοι was the custom

of shaping the tomb after the fashion of a vase. These stone vases are

extremely common in the Museum of Athens. Perhaps the earliest of them

is one published by Köhler[121]. In the relief of it we see two men hand

in hand, and it bears an inscription which Köhler on epigraphic grounds

assigns to the period B.C. 450-430. It is painted like a real Greek vase

with palmettes and maeander patterns. It was probably at the time when

the custom of placing terra-cotta vases on the tombs was dying out, that

it occurred to the sculptors to replace them by making the stele itself

in the form of a vase, adorned like the ordinary stelae with inscription

and relief. The marble vases were of two kinds. First, we have the

lekythos or unguent vase, of the same shape as the red-figured and white

ground vases very commonly placed in Athenian graves. These latter are

mentioned by Aristophanes[122] as the work of the inferior artist: ὃς

τοῖς νεκροῖσι ζωγραφεῖ τὰς ληκύθους, and in another passage he speaks of

them as sometimes let into the tomb and fastened there with lead[123].

To imitate them in marble was therefore natural. For an instance of the

lekythos tomb see figures 70 to 72, below. In the case of those who died

unmarried, a vase of another form was used as the model. Here again we

have only an imitation in stone of a terra-cotta vase often placed on

the tomb. At Athens it was a custom, when a marriage was about to take

place, for a girl to bring to the bride a vessel of water from the

spring Callirrhoe for a bridal bath. The water was fetched in a

two-handled vessel of peculiar form, the λουτροφόρος, such as seems not

to have been used on any other occasion. The Athenian Museum contains

several imitations in terra-cotta of the marriage vase; and in every

case the scenes painted on these vases are taken either from the

ceremonies of marriage or those of mourning. When a girl was married the

marriage vase was used in the pomp and jollity of the wedding: when she

died unwedded, it was placed on her tomb as a memorial. As Athenian

epitaphs put it, in that case she was wedded to Hades. On the tombs also

of youths who died before the marriage-day, the λουτροφόρος of

terra-cotta was regarded as an appropriate decoration. A well-known

passage of Demosthenes[124] gives us explicit authority for this usage.

‘What is the proof,’ he asks, ‘that Archiades died unmarried? A marriage

vase is set up on his tomb.’ Sometimes the marriage vase thus set on the

tomb was an ordinary vessel of terra-cotta. Sometimes it was represented

in relief on the stele. And sometimes the stele itself was fashioned in

the form of a marriage vase.

The usage is well illustrated by a stele from Kalyvia, now at

Athens[125], of which we give an engraving (Pl. IV). The whole field of

the stele is occupied by a great marriage vase in relief. On the top of

it, on a basis, stands a Siren, tearing her hair and beating her breast

in sign of sympathy with the mourners. On the body of the vase is

depicted a scene from the funeral rites. A marriage vase stands erect in

the midst of three mourners, all apparently women, one of whom is tying

to the handle of the vase (this vase has but one handle)

[Illustration:

PLATE IV

_Page 114_

]

a wreath. Twice over, on this curious stele, we have the symbolism of

the vase employed to indicate the unmarried condition of the defunct.

On another stele (Pl. V) three vases are represented in relief, a

marriage vase and two sepulchral lekythi[126]. The central vase bears a

relief, a young horseman armed, standing beside his horse, and giving

his hand to an elderly man who is wrapped in a cloak. The relief on the

vase to left shows us a boy, of somewhat manly form, running with a

hoop. It is likely that in the grave to which this monument belonged a

father had buried three sons, one of military age and almost

marriageable, the other two still young.

No sentiment is more often expressed in epitaphs, none more strongly

affected the Greek heart, than the sadness of the fate of those young

men and women to whom death came in the place of that marriage which was

regarded as the consummation of earthly happiness. When the marriage

vase was used for funeral libations, then indeed the bitterness of fate

was felt by every bystander. The poets have embodied this feeling in

many an epigram; one of these by the poet Meleager[127] I must

endeavour, though the task is a hard one, to reproduce in English:--

When Clearista doffed her virgin tire,

No bridal but a tomb did she require.

The flutes before her door but yesternight

To merry household clatter answered bright;

The morrow found them wailing, and the lay

Of Hymen in lament died sad away.

And torches bright that in her bower did glow

Illume the passage to the realm below.[128]

It is not, however, most usual to find the tombs of the later fifth and

the fourth centuries thus adapted to the circumstances of a special

tenant. Some of the stelae of this period, such as those of Tynnias (Pl.

X), Aristonautes (Pl. XI), and Amphotto (Pl. XVII) belong especially to

individuals; but the great majority of the graves between B.C. 450 and

300 are of eminently domestic character. The reliefs which they bear

represent not one person but many, and the inscriptions contain several

names. The simple burial customs of the Athenians made great vaults

unnecessary; a handful of ashes could be easily disposed of.

In looking at the sculpture of Attic tombs, we must not forget this

domestic and family destination. And there is another point, one of

technique, which we must also bear in mind. All decorative reliefs in

Greece, whether they belonged to the temple, the public building, or the

tomb, depended in a great degree for effect on the colour which was

freely used to help out the sculpture. Few traces of colouring now

remain on the sepulchral reliefs, but there can be no doubt that

originally they were coloured, not perhaps all over, but in many parts.

The background would be filled in with blue or other strong colour. The

hair of the persons sculptured would be, according to the almost

universal custom of Greek sculpture, red. Eyes and eyebrows would be

indicated with the brush as well as with the chisel. The garments would

commonly be at all events tinted, and in some cases they would bear

designs painted to represent embroidery, as is the case with the votive

archaic female figures recently discovered at Athens[129]. On our plate,

which represents the stele of Aristion (Pl. IX), considerable traces of

colour may be observed. And besides colour, metal accessories were in

many cases added. In the stele of Dexileos (Pl. XII), reins, sword, and

lance were added in metal.

[Illustration:

PLATE V

_Page 116_

]

Thus when we see on our reliefs a lady holding out empty hands (cf. Pl.

XXVI), we may be sure that originally those hands had borne a necklace

or other jewelry, added in colour. The handles of the marriage vase on

Pl. IV must have been marked with colour. The ornaments of the helmet of

Aristonautes (Pl. XI) were added in metal, and so on in other cases. To

the modern eye the pure white of Greek reliefs as they now are, seems

classical and appropriate. And we may be right. Greek life has passed

away, and looks upon us as if from another world in the ghostly

reflection of Greek art. We see it not in a realistic but in a softened

and ideal light. But the Greeks themselves loved strong colour, and in

any purely artistic question their eyes are far more to be trusted than

ours, which are perverted by the ugly surroundings of our daily life.

The date of Greek sepulchral monuments may be determined by a variety of

considerations. The inscriptions which they bear may help us in some

cases. We know that the old Attic alphabet, which did not distinguish

short from long vowels, confusing O with Ω, and E with H, and which used

the form [**shape] for Λ and Λ for Γ, was officially superseded by the

alphabet of Asia Minor in the archonship of Euclides 403 B.C. But long

before this date the Ionian letters had been in frequent use for private

documents. Thus any tomb bearing an inscription in the Ionian character

can scarcely be later than 400 B.C.; but may be considerably earlier.

The evidence of date furnished by inscriptions being thus rather vague,

we return to the evidence offered by the forms of the stelae and the

style of the reliefs.

A certain roughness and want of elaboration in the acroteria, the

architectural adornments of the tops of the stelae, indicates

fifth-century work. For example, the stelae of Lysander (Pl. XX) and of

Mica (Pl. XXI), with their somewhat clumsy ending above, are typical of

the fifth century, while a somewhat more elegant top, as in the stele of

Damasistrata (Pl. XXIII), is usually an indication of the more

luxurious fourth century. But style of sculpture is a safer criterion.

Those who are familiar with the style of the Parthenon frieze, and with

that of Praxitelean art, will find little difficulty in determining to

which of these two very different styles that of any given relief most

closely approximates. To the question of the relation of sepulchral

reliefs to the works of the great Athenian artists we will return in a

later chapter (XI).

The effects of the sumptuary laws of Demetrius Phalereus are clearly

visible in the Athenian cemeteries. After 300 B.C. we find no more lofty

stelae, no more temple-like tombs of great size and beauty. As might be

expected from the statement of Cicero above cited, henceforward we find

only small and mean monuments, the low stele with reliefs, the stone

lekythos, the short pillar, inscribed only with a name. Such tombs are

found in extraordinary abundance in the neighbourhood of Athens; but

their interest, whether from the point of view of the historian or the

artist, is but slight, and we shall be but little concerned with them in

these pages.

We must imagine most of the roads leading to great cities as flanked on

both sides by the sculptured memorials of the dead. Those who have

visited Rome and Pompeii will be familiar with this custom, which seems

to us rather depressing. But we must remember that the tombs of the

Greeks and Romans had not that air of uniform melancholy which tombs

bear among us. The frontispiece shows a part of the great Athenian

cemetery of the Cerameicus, which lay just outside the Dipylon Gate. It

shows us the line of tombs of various ages and of many forms, which

flanked the sacred way leading to Eleusis, the line of which is visible

in the foreground. On the left is the relief of Dexileos, which belonged

to a sort of shrine, of which the foundations still exist. Close to it

is a table or τράπεζα; below it, a tall stele with rosettes on the face

of it, and surmounted by an acanthus. Then come more tables and a flat

stele adorned with reliefs. Further are two shrines, ναΐσκοι, and a

lofty basis supporting a bull. One or two short pillars of the later age

are visible in the background. In some cases stone lekythi, such as that

lying broken at the foot of the pedestal of the bull, were inserted,

sometimes one and sometimes two, in the flat upper surface of the

tables.

To what events this section of the cemetery owes its remarkable

preservation is a matter of conjecture. Francis Lenormant suggested that

it was covered by the earthen _agger_ set up against the walls of Athens

by Sulla when he attacked the city from this side, and so preserved from

the ruin which time brings. Dr. Brückner, however, rejects this view,

thinking that the spot was buried with earth by the Athenians themselves

on some occasion[130]. Whatever explanation be accepted, it is certainly

a great gain to us thus to find preserved, like a fly in amber, a

section of a great cemetery of Greece.

The architectural features and decoration of the tombs of Athens may

best be spoken of in this place.

First, of the acanthus. The gradual growth of this ornament in

complication and variety may be traced in the stelae of successive

periods[131]. The general form is always two Ionic volutes, surmounted

by a palmette. To this is commonly added, after the fifth century B.C.,

some kind of pattern derived from the leaf of the acanthus, which

Callimachus, the inventor or improver of the Corinthian column, at the

same period introduced into temple architecture.

The acanthus is said by some to be introduced into tomb decoration

because it grew on the rocky spurs which the Greeks generally used as

burying-places. And in favour of this view may be cited the curious fact

that in the vase-paintings we often see on the top of a tomb, in place

of a sculptured acanthus,

[Illustration: FIG. 41.

HEAD OF ASSYRIAN STELE.]

[Illustration: FIG. 42. HEAD OF GREEK STELE.]

one growing naturally. But there is, on the other side, a piece of

evidence the value of which must be acknowledged. At Khorsabad in

Assyria[132], M. Place discovered a tall square stele, fluted on all

four sides, and surmounted by a device which is really a palmette, but

which bears a strong resemblance to the so-called acanthus pattern of

Greek art. The meaning and purpose of this pillar are obscure; but

whatever they may be, it is scarcely open to doubt that in an artistic

sense it lies in the line of descent of the Hellenic stele. And it

naturally suggests the question whether the finial ornament of Greek

gravestones was originally meant for an acanthus at all, or whether it

is only a variety of the Ionic scroll and the Assyrian palmette. We

engrave side by side the top of this column (Fig. 41), and for

comparison with it, an archaic anthemion from a Greek stele[133] (Fig.

42).

After the archaic period the anthemion on the top of the Attic stele

goes on developing in complexity as well as in beauty. We give three

characteristic treatments of the fourth century, which may be compared

with the example already figured. Of these monuments, one (43)[134] is

adorned with rosettes only; the second (43 A)[135] with a group of three

persons, father, mother, and daughter; the third (43 B)[136] with a

marriage vase.

[Illustration: FIG. 43. ANTHEMION OF STELE.]

The acanthus is not the only ornament used as a finial for Greek stelae:

other devices sometimes appear in the same place; and their meaning is a

matter worthy of consideration.

On some of the early monuments of Attica there stood a sphinx. The

instance figured (44) is from an early tomb at Spata, near Athens[137].

The monster is archaic in form: her hair falls in long formal curls, her

breast is covered with

[Illustration: FIG. 43 A. ANTHEMION.]

feathers: on her head is a round crown. The history of the sphinx has

been traced by Milchhoefer[138] and other writers. Its origin is

certainly to be sought in Egypt, in which country sphinxes were set up

in lines as guardians of the temples. The Egyptian sphinx is unwinged

and male, as the beard which it commonly wears clearly shows; but when

the people of Asia Minor and Syria imitated the form, they added wings.

The significance of the monster was in Egypt quite vague; and it was

probably even more vague in Asia. Thus when the Greeks adopted the

strange form, it cannot have brought with it much meaning. They had to

give it a meaning of their own. In fact, it was quite characteristic in

the Greeks that they

[Illustration: FIG. 43 B. ANTHEMION.]

[Illustration: FIG. 44. SPHINX OF SPATA.]

[Illustration: FIG. 45. TERRA-COTTA: SPHINX AND YOUTH.]

borrowed forms and gave to them their own meaning. They took the forms

and sounds of the letters of the alphabet from the Phoenicians, but used

those letters to express their own thoughts, and the same thing took

place when they received from the East an established pattern or form in

art. To the Greeks, then, the sphinx is a monster, sometimes fierce and

hostile, sometimes more kindly and gentle, who brings men and women to

an early death; a spiritual force, like the Siren, which bears away

souls. On a terra-cotta (Fig. 45) published by Stackelberg[139], a

sphinx, this time with human arms, is represented as standing on the

body of a dead youth. Some such group must have been before the mind of

Aeschylus when he describes the shield of Parthenopaeus as adorned with

a sphinx bearing in her claws a man of Thebes[140]. But in the sphinx

of our engraving there is no sign of fierceness or ravening.

[Illustration: FIG. 46. STELE OF LAMPTRAE, RESTORED.]

A sphinx probably stood on the top of one of the most interesting of

early Athenian monuments, the stele of Lamptrae, of which I give a

restoration (Fig. 46) by Dr. Winter[141]. It consisted of a thick slab

with elegantly adorned cornice. On the top is a deep cutting, made to

hold either the sphinx of the engraving, or, possibly, a portrait. Three

sides of the slab bear low reliefs which are much injured, but the

subjects of which are of interest. On the front is a young horseman,

evidently the denizen of the tomb, who rides to the right on a horse,

holding spear and shield: a second horse is represented by a mere

doubling of the outlines. On one of the narrower sides stands the father

of the horseman, in an attitude of grief: on the other side are two

mourning women, no doubt his near relatives. To these mourning relatives

we may find abundant parallels among the vases which represent the lying

in state of the corpse and its removal to the place of burial[142].

It will be observed that the sphinx of the terra-cotta has human arms.

This, and her female sex, bring her into close connexion with other

female monsters, who also are winged and have the arms of women, the

Harpies and the Sirens. Harpy and Siren are, in fact, not clearly

distinguished in art; both are human-headed birds. And both are daemons

destructive to human life, since, according to the legends, the Harpies

were notable for foul and ravenous habits, the Sirens for a passion for

the blood of the sailors whom they drew to them by the sweetness of

their singing. As sphinx and Siren were thus both alike the ministers of

early or untimely death, it will not greatly surprise us to find that on

later monuments Sirens appear in the place of sphinxes. An instance from

the museum at Athens is figured (Fig. 47)[143]; the woman-bird is human

from head to waist, and is occupied with playing on her lyre. The tomb

on which she stood perhaps belonged to some young girl or boy who

perished by an untimely death.

Yet this is by no means certain. For the Siren of Attic tombs has

greatly modified her nature under the kindly influence of Attic poetry

and art. She came from the East, almost certainly as a malicious and

devouring daemon. But in the ordinary custom of Attic tombs of the fifth

and fourth centuries she becomes friendly and sympathetic. Sometimes, as

in our example, she plays on a musical instrument. Sometimes she seems

to express grief by the movements of her arms, beating her breast, or

tearing her hair (see Pl. IV). A passage in the _Helena_[144] of

Euripides represents the Sirens quite in the same sympathetic light.

Helen, when wailing over the calamities at Troy calls on the Sirens,

winged maidens, daughters of the earth, to come and join to her

lamentations the music in which they were skilled.

[Illustration: FIG. 47. SIREN, FROM TOMB.]

The sphinx and the Siren may have originally found their place on tombs

as ἀποτρόπαια, stone images of daemons to drive away the real daemons.

But they retain their place on the tombs of a more refined age to

express sympathy with the mourners, and to add a gentle touch of sorrow

to the delightful domestic scenes which usually occupy the front of the

monuments. Sophocles calls the Sirens the daughters of Phorcys, who sing

the ways of Hades; it cannot therefore seem inappropriate that the tomb

of Sophocles himself was adorned with the figure of one of these

spirits.

[Illustration: FIG. 48. HEAD OF STELE.]

More obscure devices are sometimes mingled with the acanthus over the

tomb. In a few cases (Fig. 48) we find a pair of goats butting one

another over a drinking-cup[145]. The cup seems to show that there must

be here some Dionysiac reference or meaning, though what it is we

cannot say. In one case a female figure (Fig. 49), the import of which

is hard to determine[146], stands over a tomb, with the acanthus-leaves

for a background.

[Illustration: FIG. 49. HEAD OF STELE.]

It is not rare in most periods of Greek art to place on a tomb, instead

of a portrait, the image of an animal, or some other device, the meaning

of which has to be discovered by the spectator. Sometimes it contains

an allusion, usually to his name. We engrave (Fig. 50) a stele on which

is represented a lion in relief[147], and as the name of the person whom

the tomb commemorates is Leon, the allusion is clear. We may compare an

epigram of Simonides[148], written for a tomb, which runs thus:--

Most brave of beasts am I; of men most brave

He whom I guard, reclining on his grave.

Leon his name, yet save he had possessed

The lion nature, here I should not rest.

[Illustration: FIG. 50. STELE OF LEON.]

The traditional character of the lion, which was known to the Greeks

rather from the _Iliad_ than from personal experience, made his figure

a fitting adornment for the tombs of those who had died in battle for

their country. Two gigantic lions still survive which adorned Greek

tombs of historical celebrity. One stood over the remains of the Theban

band which fell at Chaeroneia. The other, brought by Sir Charles Newton

from Cnidus, probably marked the burial-place of the Athenians who fell

in the battle of Cnidus, 394 B.C. The lioness on tombs seems to have

scarcely had such dignified associations. On the tomb of Lais at Corinth

stood a lioness, holding in her paws a ram[149], a symbol of the

destructive force of the charms of the courtezan. A lioness without a

tongue is said also to have stood on the tomb of Leaena, the Athenian

courtezan who was a friend of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, and refused to

betray the conspirators against the Tyrants.

A bull or cow sometimes also stood on a grave. In the British Museum is

a bull of this class[150]. A heifer is said to have stood on the tomb of

Boidion, concubine of Chares, who followed him in his expedition against

Philip of Macedon[151]. On the grave of Diogenes of Sinope was a dog, to

mark his cynic nature. But the dog which appears on the summit of a tomb

in the Athenian cemetery need not have anything to do with cynicism. He

may have his place as a trusty watcher and guardian; or he may be

connected with the cultus of the dead, as we have already suggested. On

the grave of Philager his teacher, Metellus Nepos, set a raven, which

Cicero declared to be most appropriate to a master who taught how to fly

better than how to speak[152]. Of course the raven, as the bird sacred

to Apollo, was very appropriate on the tombs of learned men. In an

epitaph in the _Anthology_[153] it is said that the grave of the poet

Sophocles was surmounted by a satyr, holding in his hand a female mask.

As, however, we are told by other authorities that a Siren stood on his

tomb, we must suppose the satyr to have surmounted a cenotaph erected to

the poet by his admirers in some other city than Athens. From another

epigram[154] we learn that on the grave of Plato an eagle was

sculptured: here we are clearly in the realm of poetic symbolism.

CHAPTER IX

ATHENS AND GREECE. PORTRAITS

In the Spartan group of sepulchral monuments we found one of the two

fountain-heads of Greek sepulchral reliefs, springing directly out of

the ancestor-worship of the Dorian race. For the other main source,

which is much less religious and more artistic in origin, we turn to

Athens and to Ionia. It arises out of the custom of setting up portraits

of the dead.

The earliest sepulchral monuments which reach us from Attica, setting

aside the merely decorative or symbolical sphinx, are portraits of the

dead. In these portraits there is something of artistic and something of

religious purpose. As we shall presently see, no hard and fast line can

be drawn between the image used in ancestor-worship and the portrait

which is merely a memorial. In fact we may see two lines of tendency

taking their rise in the mere image of the dead. The one tendency is to

bring it nearer to the images of the gods; to identify the departed

ancestor or friend with Hades, the ruler of the world of shades. The

other tendency is to render the portrait a characteristic memorial of

the life which is past. In almost all existing sculptural remains we may

see something of both tendencies, and it is by no means easy to

determine what features in them properly belong to the past life, and

what features to the life which begins with death. At Sparta, as we have

seen, there is almost no reference to the past. In Lycia, past and

future are closely blended. At Athens, and in several districts of

Greece, the past has a tendency to eclipse the future. Yet at least in

the earlier stelae the religious, the human, and the artistic are all

actively working elements.

From the middle of the sixth century onwards the custom prevailed of

placing upon the tomb a portrait of the occupant, who is represented in

characteristic attitude and employment[155]. A man in middle life is

commonly represented in arms; a youth appears as an athlete holding

strigil or discus. A married woman appears with the basket of wool,

which signifies her most usual employment to be spinning; a young girl

carries a doll, or plays with a pet bird or dog. Sometimes this portrait

is sculptured in the round; sometimes it appears in relief, on a larger

or a smaller scale.

But no one at all well acquainted with the religious feelings and

artistic tendencies of the Greeks will expect that portraits thus

erected will be portraits in any modern or naturalistic sense, at all

events until after the fourth century. When an honorary statue was

erected in the neighbourhood of a temple or set up in a market-place in

the likeness of some statesman or poet or athlete, it would represent

the actual features of the person so commemorated, in the manner in

which the sculptors of the time understood the art of portraiture.

Greater vagueness and generality always in Greece characterized the

sepulchral portrait. It was a radical feeling of the Greek mind that he

who died put away the accidents of his personal individuality, and

became in some degree a mere phase of the deity of the lower world.

Thus, though he would not lose what was most essential in his

personality, sex, youth or age, warlike or peaceful character, and the

like, he would become typical of a class rather than individual, _the_

warrior, the athlete, or the girl, rather than a particular man or

woman. Besides this deep-seated tendency, it must often have happened

that the sculptor who made the effigy had scarcely seen the person to

be represented, and was quite incapable of making from memory a

life-like portrait, whereas taking a mould from the dead face was a

process invented, we are told[156], by Lysistratus, brother of Lysippus,

the contemporary of Alexander the Great, and unknown at an earlier

period.

[Illustration: FIG. 51. PORTRAIT FROM TOMB, THERA[157].]

We find in Greece proper as early as the sixth century portrait statues

from tombs. Male figures stand naked, female figures are closely wrapped

in archaic drapery. It is very probable that some of the stiff archaic

statues of men which figure in the earlier chapters of the histories of

Greek sculpture really come from tombs. They commonly pass under the

name of Apollo, as the Apollo of Thera, of Orchomenus, of Tenea, and so

forth. But at the very early stage of Greek art to which they belong,

the figures of gods and men were distinguished one from the other rather

by circumstance and attribute than by any marked feature of the statues

themselves. And thus some writers[158] have maintained that these

so-called Apollos are really portraits of athletes. In regard to one of

them, the Apollo of Thera, Professor Loeschcke has argued from its

find-spot, in the neighbourhood of the rocky cemetery of that island,

that it probably stood on a tomb. To bring before the eyes of the reader

the character of these early portrait-statues I have given an engraving

of the head of this statue (Fig. 51). The long locks fall over the

shoulders, and the hair over the forehead is close curled in the

decorative Ionian fashion. The upturned corners of the mouth, and the

almost Chinese obliquity of the eyes, are well-known features of the

most primitive art of Greece.

In the same paper Professor Loeschcke publishes[159] a fragment of an

archaic equestrian statue (Fig. 52), which comes from the graveyard of

Vari in Attica, and was probably a memorial of a cavalier buried there.

The equestrian figure on Greek tombs had, as we have found in an earlier

chapter, usually a special meaning; but here it seems to be a mere

portrait of one who had served in the cavalry, or perhaps had won a

victory at the great games of Greece with a racehorse. Noteworthy are

the long rigidly cut figure of the horse, and the seat of the rider,

whose legs stretch along the flanks of the horse. This may result from

the greater sculptural difficulty of carving the legs in a detached

attitude.

We possess also certain seated female figures of the same

[Illustration:

PLATE VI

_Page 136_

]

[Illustration: FIG. 52. HORSEMAN FROM TOMB.]

early age which appear to have adorned tombs. A fragment of one of these

was found built into the wall which Themistocles constructed round

Athens soon after the battle of Salamis, a wall erected, as

Thucydides[160] tells us, in such haste that men spared neither public

nor private edifice in its construction. But the best evidence as to the

character of the early sepulchral portraits of Athenian ladies reaches

us by a less direct route. Many people are familiar with the charming

seated figure in the Vatican which goes by the name of Penelope, a

veiled woman seated in pensive attitude, with her head resting on one

hand, while the other hand lies on the rock on which she sits (Pl. VI).

This rock, however, is a restoration[161], and replicas prove that in

place of it we must suppose a chair, under which stood a large

work-basket, to have supported the lady. She is, in all likelihood, no

mythic heroine, but an ordinary Greek mistress of the house, resting for

a while from the active toils of the loom in an attitude which gives the

impression that the thought of approaching death has come over her with

saddening power. Both the attitude and the basket of work recur

frequently in the reliefs of early stelae[162], and there is good reason

to suppose that the so-called Penelope is an excerpt from some Greek

cemetery, though the statue itself dates only from the Roman age. The

original from which it is copied would date from the early part of the

fifth century.

Before going on to speak of the stelae with reliefs, which are our main

business, it may be well to follow down to a later time the lines which

start with figures like the ‘Apollo’ of Tenea and the ‘Penelope’ of the

Vatican.

It is by no means unlikely that in later days tombs in Greece may

sometimes have been adorned with life-like portraits of their occupants,

executed by some of the great sculptors of the day, such as the noble

figures of Mausolus and Artemisia, which stood in the Mausoleum at

Halicarnassus. But certainly this was not the only, probably not the

usual, line followed in memorial statues. The idea of generalization and

of deification of the dead, of which I have already spoken, was by no

means inoperative in this province.

Pl. VII represents one of two figures found in the island of Andros, and

now placed in the museum at Athens[163]. This male figure obviously

appears in the guise of Hermes, and indeed bears a resemblance which is

more than superficial to the celebrated Olympian Hermes of Praxiteles.

Very probably it may have grasped the herald’s staff of Hermes. But the

snake which twines round the tree-trunk, which is a necessary support to

the marble statue, has no connexion with Hermes, but seems to indicate

rather a connexion with

[Illustration:

PLATE VII

_Page 138_

]

[Illustration:

PLATE VIII

_Page 138_

]

the grave, that in fact the statue is rather of a mortal in the

similitude of Hermes than of the god himself. And this suspicion becomes

a certainty when we consider other facts. Close to it was found its

companion, a female figure, which does not seem to stand for a goddess,

but for an ordinary woman[164]; and as male and female were thus found

together, they had probably both stood on one tomb. There are other

pairs of figures, of later and ruder work, at Athens, which in general

character resemble the pair from Andros. Thus we seem to be on the track

of a clear and defined sepulchral custom prevailing from the fourth

century onwards. The successors of Alexander in Egypt, Syria, and

Macedon appear on their coins in the guise of various deities, Hermes,

Apollo, and Dionysus particularly; and it can scarcely surprise us that

a distinguished private person should by the ennobling touch of death be

raised to the same level, and take the form of Hermes, the messenger of

the world of shades. We find that in Thessaly tombstones quite usually

are inscribed, not only with the name of the occupant of the grave, but

also with a formula dedicating them to Hermes Chthonius[165].

The Museum of Berlin has acquired, from the Sabouroff Collection, two

interesting statues of women, seated in an attitude of grief, which

almost certainly belong to tombs, and challenge comparison with the

‘Penelope.’ One is figured in Pl. VIII. Their date is probably the

fourth century; but they certainly do not come from the hands of the

great sculptors of that century; the work of them is poor, and their

style has been well termed that of domestic art. Their dress is not that

of the Athenian lady, but that of the maidservants who so often appear

on the stelae in attendance on their mistress[166], a dress of coarse

material with long sleeves reaching to the wrist. They are clearly

mourning slave-girls, who were placed on the grave of their mistress to

commemorate her wealth and her kindness to her dependants.

We next approach the rich series of sepulchral reliefs, in which, as we

have already shown, three periods are to be distinguished: first, that

before the Persian War; second, the fifth and fourth centuries; and

third, the later age. In this chapter we deal with the representations

which are primarily portraits, leaving more complicated scenes for the

next chapter.

Among the best-known of the works of early Athenian art is the stele of

Aristion, which was found in 1838 in the midst of a tumulus at

Velanideza in Attica. Simple and in details clumsy, the figure of the

warrior (Pl. IX A) on that stele is singularly pleasing as a whole, and

the unrivalled eye of Brunn saw in it, at a time when very little was

known as to the early art of Athens, the whole promise of the Attic art

of the future, more especially in the way in which it occupied the field

of the relief, and was wrought into a composition which showed in all

its _naïveté_ a fine sense of proportion and of the relation of the part

to the whole. As if on a parade, the soldier stands in helmet and

cuirass, grasping his spear, and waiting the word of command. The hair

and the right hand especially show the limitations imposed on the artist

by the undeveloped character of his technique. Yet the relief is justly

a favourite with lovers of art. One of its charms our plate imperfectly

reproduces, the delicate remains of colouring, which may still be traced

on the marble, and which are repeated on the casts in our cast

collections.

From the same cemetery as this work of the sculptor Aristocles comes

another stele adorned, not with relief, but

[Illustration:

PLATE IX

_Page 140_

]

with painting[167], and bearing the inscription, Λυσὲᾳ ἐνθάδε σῆμα πατὴρ

Σήμων ἐπέθηκεν. The colour has indeed disappeared with time, but the

patience of Mr. Thiersch and of Dr. Loeschcke has succeeded in proving

its former presence from the variety of preservation of the surface of

the marble, the parts of it which were protected by colour having

retained the original surface, while those which were not so protected

suffered from corrosion. We can clearly trace the outlines of the figure

of Lyseas, a bearded man, who stands, holding in one hand a winecup, in

the other a bough for lustration. Below is a jockey, seated on a

galloping horse, doubtless a memorial of some victory won in the great

games.

Lyseas is clad in civic dress, and in this respect he resembles another

person of distinction whose stele reaches us from Boeotia, and was

executed by the artist Alxenor of Naxos (Pl. IX B). This delightful

monument represents a worthy Greek citizen in one of his lighter moods.

Standing in a position of ease, he rests his weight on a staff which

supports his shoulder, and holds out in sport a grasshopper to a

favourite dog, who leaps up in an attitude somewhat constrained, and

clearly resulting from the narrow limits of the monument. The

inscription added by the artist is as delightfully simple as the

representation itself: ‘Alxenor of Naxos fashioned me: only look!’

Alxenor was a native of Naxos, Aristocles probably of a Parian family;

these are facts, among others, which confirm the view put forth by

Loeschcke and Furtwängler, that the stele with portrait is of Ionian

origin, and imported into Greece together with the marble of the islands

of the Asiatic coast, and with the sculptors who came to exercise their

hereditary skill in carving that marble. It is difficult to prove to

demonstration any assertion in regard to the art of Ionia, as the

remains which will finally establish or condemn such assertions still

lie beneath the soil of Miletus, Ephesus, Phocaea, and the other great

Ionian settlements of the coast. But we can assert with reasonable

confidence, that as Greece owed conservatism and ancestor-worship to the

rigid Dorians, so she owed progress in art and all the delights of life

to the joyous Ionian strain; and portraiture has in it the human and

individual character which belongs especially to the Ionians.

[Illustration: FIG. 53. SEATED HERO.]

Another relief, now preserved at Ince Blundell Hall[168] (Fig. 53), sets

before us a typical Greek citizen, seated in dignified fashion. From the

artistic point of view it is interesting to see how completely, even in

the archaic period, the sculptor has attained the art of displaying

rather than concealing the bodily forms by means of the drapery. Whence

this relief may have come we know not. But it is of Parian marble, and

the comparison of other reliefs indicates for it an Ionian origin,

perhaps on one of the islands of the Aegean. We miss the attributes

which in the stelae of Sparta refer to the cultus of ancestors. It is,

however, impossible to be sure that they were originally wanting. For it

seems clear that on the right hand, which lies palm upwards, some

attribute rested which was indicated in colour, perhaps a flat cup,

while the raised left hand may have held a flower.

[Illustration: FIG. 54. HEAD OF YOUTH HOLDING DISCUS.]

The stelae of youths are in the early age more common than those of

grown men. As we might expect, the portraits of young men, even from

their tombs, are marked by an athletic tinge. In the wall of

Themistocles, already mentioned, near the Dipylon gate of Athens, was

found the head of a young man, who had probably been a winner in the

pentathlon, a combination of five contests--hurling the spear, throwing

the discus, leaping, running, and wrestling[169]. The victors in this

complicated sport appear in their statues holding either spear or discus

or the weights (άλτῆρες) used in leaping. In the present case it is the

discus which has the preference (Fig. 54). Held up in the left hand, the

discus forms a sort of background or frame to the remarkable head, with

its long arched nose, its wide-open archaic eye, and the long mass of

its hair falling down the neck.

[Illustration: FIG. 55. DERMYS AND CITYLUS.]

To this work, which is, for the time, of finished style and execution, a

strong contrast is presented by an extraordinary monument of Boeotia

(Fig. 55), from the tomb of two brothers,

[Illustration:

PLATE X

_Page 144_

]

Dermys and Citylus[170]. The artist certainly meant rightly, and he has

succeeded in conveying to future times the impression of the mutual

affection of the pair, who stand with the arm of each thrown round the

other’s neck, in a fashion peculiar to lovers and schoolboys. But

unfortunately his ambition was beyond his skill, and the extraordinary

rigidity and helplessness of the group are even more conspicuous than

its good motive. It is hard to see whence the arms come and whither they

go; and it is quite clear that unless the sculptor had added the name of

each brother in the marble, their best friends would have been unable to

discern which was which. The inscription further records the name of the

person who erected the tomb: ‘Set up by Amphalces in memory of Dermys

and Citylus.’

Coming down to a somewhat later time, we are compelled by the abundance

of the material to select a few portraits of men as typical, and to pass

over the great majority of them in silence.

A thoroughly typical portrait of an Athenian citizen of the fifth

century is found in the stele of Tynnias, the son of Tynnon (Pl. X).

Tynnias is seated holding a long staff, his garment thrown loosely over

his shoulders but leaving his breast bare. The work is not very careful,

yet it would not be easy to find in art a figure of greater grace and

dignity. This mere mortal would sit undisgraced among the seated gods of

the frieze of the Parthenon. He might almost stand for Zeus, the father

of gods and men, instead of for the father of ordinary Athenian girls

and boys. Only in one point does his humanity come out clearly. The

chair on which he is seated is not such a square high-backed throne as

would suit a deity, or such as commonly appears on tombs, but a

thoroughly domestic chair, such as we see in the domestic interiors of

vases (see Figs. 10 and 69). The back slopes at a comfortable angle,

and the legs diverge so far apart that it could only with great

difficulty be overturned. Since the Chippendale reaction we have

accepted the notion that chairs with bent legs are not artistic, but it

is clear that some skilful Greek sculptors were of another opinion. The

boots of Tynnias also are not the sandals of ordinary Greek art, but

leather boots not unlike ours.

The simple form of this monument with its shallow pediment contrasts

with the more highly developed and elegant stelae of the fourth century;

the rough surface below shows where it was let into a socket. It is in

fact an ordinary roadside tomb; can we wonder that the nation which had

such perfect taste in common things attained so perfect a sense of

beauty in form and dignity in deportment?