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.

.]

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

PLATE VI

_Page 136_
]

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

PLATE VII

_Page 138_
]

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

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.

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.

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.

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,

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?

To the peaceful Tynnias a striking contrast is offered by the figures of citizens who fell in battle, and whose graves are a memorial of their warlike prowess. We give three examples.

First, the tomb of Aristonautes, son of Archenautes (Pl. XI). This is almost the only example which has come down to us of a complete ναῗδιον or temple. The letters of the inscription indicate the earlier part of the fourth century. Aristonautes is represented in the act of charging the enemy; he wears a conical helmet adorned with ornaments of gilt-bronze[171], and a cuirass; in his hands were sword or spear and shield. The relief is so high that the figure is almost in the round, to which circumstance we must attribute the loss of the left leg, which is now replaced in plaster. A chlamys lies on the left shoulder. The ground on which the hero charges is the rocky soil of some battlefield; the background was painted blue to bring out strongly the manly lines of the form. This monument comes from the Cerameicus at Athens.

PLATE XI

_Page 146_
]

It would not be easy to imagine a more vigorous and lifelike image of a fallen warrior than this. Drapery and bodily forms alike are of the noblest. The face, with its square form, overhanging eyebrows, and parted lips, breathes the very spirit of military ardour. Such as every friend of Aristonautes would wish him to look when he sprang forward in his last fatal rush upon the foe, such he stands in imperishable marble. A grave in Westminster Abbey is supposed to recompense the English soldier for pain and untimely death, but surely the idea of living in marble under the eyes of all his fellow-citizens might furnish at least as strong an impulse to valiant deeds as the thought of a modern cathedral with its tasteless monuments and inanimate likenesses. It would, however, be a mistake to suppose that this figure, for all its lifelikeness, is an individual portrait. It is too strongly marked by the style of one of the noblest of Attic sculptors, Scopas, to allow us to doubt that there is in it a strong ideal element.

Another monument of the same school is the well-known relief (Pl. XII) in which we see Dexileos of the Athenian cavalry riding down and transfixing an overthrown foe, who vainly tries to strike back[172]. The inscription beneath this relief, which comes from a small chapel near the Dipylon gate of Athens, proves that it was executed in memory of a horseman who fell in the Corinthian War of 394 B.C. History records that in the battle the Athenians were defeated, and one is tempted to pause for a moment to consider how a modern sculptor would have represented Dexileos. An artist such as those who have modelled the tombs of St. Paul’s and Westminster would probably have sculptured him smitten to death, falling back in the arms of a grateful country; perhaps would have added above an angel crowning him with a wreath of celestial reward. But the Greek artists of the good period could not find in defeat and death any elements worthy of their art: they must represent those whom they portrayed in the moment of success and victory, not in that of overthrow. The difference is very suggestive. Infinitely inferior to Greek art in charm, in simplicity and dignity, modern art introduces higher elements than were usually taken into account in Hellas. From the artistic point of view the ancients were right; but from the ethical point of view there may be more to be said for the moderns.

A more modest memorial of a warrior comes from Tegea[173] (Fig. 56). In the relief we see a man named Lisas in the

PLATE XII

_Page 148_
]

guise not of a hoplite but of a peltast or auxiliary. His defensive armour consists only of a conical helmet and a shield. His chiton is girt only on the left shoulder, so as to leave the right arm perfectly free. What he carried in the right hand we cannot be sure. It was filled in in colour, and has disappeared. The attitude makes us at first think of a sling. But it is more likely that the weapon was a light javelin for throwing. Lisas is evidently advancing over rocky ground to the attack.

From monuments of warriors we pass to those of young athletes; and in Greece almost every man who died before coming to full maturity appears on his tomb in athletic guise. The exercises of the palaestra were not reserved, as among us, for a certain number of the most robust young men, but were, like the military service with which they were nearly connected, a part of the life of every man not given up to sloth and luxury. On Pl. XIII is a noble figure of an athletic ephebus. He stands solidly on flat feet, naked but for a chlamys which he holds with the right hand, while the left grasps strigil and oil-flask, the necessaries of the life of the athlete. The bare body is treated with utmost simplicity and without a trace of self-consciousness. A dog sits at his master’s feet with nose upturned. This monument is from Thespiae in Boeotia, and must date from the middle of the fifth century: the letters over the head, Ἀγαθόκλη χαῖρε, are, it need scarcely be said, of much later times, proving that this stele, like so many at Athens, was used again in Roman times to mark a fresh tomb.

Of somewhat later date is the relief on an Attic lekythos (Fig. 57), in which we find an athlete exercising himself[174]. Stark naked, according to the invariable custom of the Greek palaestra, he rests his weight on one leg, while on the other he balances a heavy stone ball, such a ball as was actually found in the gymnasium of Pompeii. This was doubtless an exercise of the class used for training special muscles and producing a perfect physical development. In front of the athlete stands a slave-boy, holding his oil-flask, and behind him is a pillar on which is his garment.

A stele from Thespiae, of the middle of the fifth century[175] (Fig. 58), presents us with the figure of a young horseman, seated on a galloping horse. He wears the chiton and the Thessalian horseman’s cloak, the chlamys. The reins were filled in in bronze; the holes for fixing the metal being still visible in the horse’s mouth and neck. The easy and masterly

PLATE XIII

_Page 150_
]

seat of the rider, and the noble forms of the horse, place this relief among the most pleasing which we possess.

A fine monument of the age and style of Pheidias comes from Aegina (Pl. XIV). Carved on it is the beautiful figure of a young man clad in a mantle, who holds in his left hand a bird, and extends the right without obvious purpose[176]. By this hand is a bird-cage; under it is a sepulchral monument, against which a boy leans, and on the top of which is a sculptured cat. The cat was well known in Egypt in antiquity, but the Greeks were unfamiliar with it, and its presence in this connexion is curious. The young man reminds us by the form of his head and his garment of the youths of the Parthenon frieze, who are his contemporaries and may come from the same chisel. The beautiful ornament which surmounts the group forms in its extreme gracefulness a fitting boundary to it.

Another striking group (Pl. XV) comes from the bed of the Ilissus. It is nearly a century later in date than the last-mentioned. We see in it a youth of magnificent proportions, half sitting on and half leaning against a sepulchral column. In the left hand he grasps a short staff, which rests on his knee. At his feet is a dog scenting the quarry; on the steps of the stele is seated in an attitude of dejection a young boy, while an old man, no doubt the father of him to whom the tomb belongs, gazes earnestly into his face. No doubt this vigorous young man was a hunter of hares, the short staff being such as hunters used to throw at the prey. Nothing but the view of the original of this wonderful relief, or at least of a cast of it, suffices to make one appreciate quite adequately its beauty.

With these reliefs we may compare an epitaph[177], written by an anonymous author to be placed on the tomb of a young man named Pericles. From the description of the relief which the tomb bore it is clear that the implements of the chase were represented in it in detail; this would be quite natural in the Hellenistic age, as we may see by comparing several examples in the Museum at Athens[178]:--

A marble tomb I stand for Archias’ son,
Young Pericles, and speak his hunting done.
The horse, the spear, in my relief are set,
The dogs, the stakes, and on the stakes the net.
Yet all are stone. The beasts their pleasure take
Around; thy wakeless sleep they cannot break.

In the last two cases a stele has been present in the background, and a boy shows by his attitude and expression traces of grief. By such gentle hints does the sculptor of

PLATE XIV

_Page 152_
]

PLATE XV

_Page 152_
]

Greece shadow forth rather than express his meaning. The deceased himself is in both cases represented in the perfection of health and vigour; it is only the minor characters of the groups who give a suggestion of the mortality of such perfection.

But the young men of Athens were not all notable for warlike prowess or skill in the palaestra. Another relief[179] represents a youth seated reading from a scroll. He was either an author or an ardent student of letters. The work is of the fourth century. In our chapter on epitaphs may be found several destined for the tombs of those who excelled rather in intellectual pursuits than those of the gymnasium.

In some cases the reference to the past life of the deceased and the manner of his death is clearer and more explicit. For example, one Democleides (Fig. 59) is represented on his tomb as seated in an attitude of dejection on the deck of a galley[180]. His head rests on his hand; behind him lie his shield and helmet. No doubt he was a soldier who perished at sea, whether in a naval engagement or by shipwreck. An epigram in the _Anthology_[181], by an unknown writer, was evidently written to be placed under some such representation as this:--

A vessel’s oars and prow I here behold.
O cease! why paint them o’er the ashes cold?
Nay! let the shipwrecked sailor underground
Forget the fate which ’mid the waves he found.

It has been pointed out that, in the reliefs of tombs, the persons represented usually merge their individual peculiarities, and appear as types. But few rules are without exceptions: and, as an exception, I engrave (Fig. 60) a highly characteristic portrait of an elderly man, who appears in the background of a group of the fourth century[182]. It is not what we should call a classical type, but full of character and energy, and quite individual in character.

The early art of Greece is seldom very successful in dealing with children. Children did not, in the great age of Hellas, interest the Greeks as they do us; they were valued rather for what they would become than for what they were. Thus the representations of them are made too much in the light of the future, and boys and girls on the monuments are figured as little men and women. This was the more natural

as children had no childish dress, but wore clothes like those of adults. One has only to compare, in the celebrated group of Praxiteles, the figure of the child Dionysus with that of Hermes, who carries him, to realize fully the lacuna thus produced in ancient art. An early Athenian stele (Fig. 61) bears in relief the figure of a young boy named Callis[tratus?], who holds in one hand a bird, while a dog leaps up to greet him. The name being incomplete, some have regarded the child as a girl, and in fact the decision as to the sex is not easy.

Turning from men to women, we may cite a few instances of the characteristic portrait, though, generally speaking, the tombs of women are decorated with such groups as we shall deal with in the next chapter.

First we may take a stone (Pl. XVI), the very form of which, with the rough surface of the lower half, sufficiently proves that it was placed directly in the ground or the mound of earth which covered the grave[183]. The device is simple, a veiled matron seated, holding in her hands attributes the nature of which is not easily determined, but which may be

PLATE XVI

_Page 156_
]

a cake and a bird, and in any case must be regarded as gifts of the survivors. The work is archaic, even earlier in character than the Persian Wars, according to the editors of the _Corpus_. In another early relief (Fig. 62), which bears the name of Mynno[184], we may see under the seat of the lady a work basket, such as we have already observed placed under the so-called Penelope’s seat. With both hands Mynno twists her thread on a distaff, which is visible immediately under her left arm. The form of the stele indicates the fifth century; and it is noteworthy that the art of the time had not yet mastered the problem of presenting the breast in true profile: while Mynno’s face is turned to the right, her bosom appears to be turned rather towards the spectator, and even the further knee is represented with some clumsiness.

Beside these simple and characteristic portraits of seated women we must place a standing figure. The stele bears the name of Amphotto, and comes from Thebes (Pl. XVII). There is here, as in many Boeotian monuments, a pleasing absence of convention. The dress of Amphotto is arranged in an unusual manner; her hair streams down her back. She seems at first sight quite an ordinary mortal; yet there are features in the representation which belong to another sphere. On the girl’s head is a tall circular crown, of the kind called by archaeologists the _polus_, which is a distinguishing mark of goddesses in early art. In her hands also are perhaps a flower (represented in painting and so lost) and a fruit, which are the characteristic offerings to the dead, and remind us of the Lycian and Spartan monuments of the cultus of heroes.

The Amphotto stele belongs to the middle of the fifth century. Of the same age is an interesting slab at the British Museum[185], on which is depicted a woman seated, also wearing the polus. She holds in one hand a leaf-shaped fan, of the same kind which the statuettes of Tanagra commonly hold; and in the other hand a cup from which a serpent feeds. The serpent here takes us still nearer to the ideas which gave rise to the Spartan stelae.

A class of reliefs must not be omitted which represents

PLATE XVII

_Page 158_
]

young girls holding dolls. The specimen engraved (Fig. 63) is from the tomb of one Aristomache[186]. Aristomache is about thirteen or fourteen years old; the undeveloped breast shows her not to have attained full womanhood. Her head, gently bent, is turned towards a little figure, no doubt intended for a terra-cotta statuette, which she holds in her right hand. This statuette might perhaps represent a deity; but the comparison of other reliefs[187], where a doll is certainly represented, makes us disposed to see one here also. Greek girls were allowed dolls until they married, when they often dedicated them, with balls and other girlish toys, to some female deity[188]. The presence of the doll, then, shows that Aristomache has not yet taken a husband and laid aside infants of terra-cotta for those of flesh.

Finally, we engrave (Fig. 64) a characteristic figure of a priestess of Isis[189], from a tomb on which she appears, probably in company of her parents, but they have been broken away. In the stiff and formal dress of her calling she advances, bearing in her hands the sistrum and vase of the goddess who, of all the deities, was most closely associated with the future life. To her patronage and protection her priestess trusts for a prosperous voyage past the dangers of the last voyage, and a happy resting-place in Hades. The letters of the name, Alexandra, show that the monument belongs to the Roman age, though it is by no means wanting in charm.

This figure is characteristic of the late age of Attic reliefs, but parallels to it at an earlier period are not wanting. For example, an Athenian tomb of the fourth century[190] shows us a lady seated, to whom a young girl brings a tympanum or drum, the special instrument of the Phrygian Goddess Cybele. And a metrical inscription, which accompanies the design, tells us that the deceased lady was a priestess of Cybele. Cybele, at an earlier time, filled in some respects nearly the same place in the religion of the Athenians which Isis took in Hellenistic days. The paths of the dead were under her guardianship, and she might be trusted to ensure to her votaries a place in the world below.