Chapter X: Family Groups

We next reach the ordinary family groups, a class of representations usual in the most beautiful and distinctive of the Athenian stelae. It is these which have captivated a long series of travellers and artists from Goethe onwards; and it is these which naturally rise before the imagination when the cemeteries of Athens are spoken of. Goethe has observed that the wind which blows from the tombs of the ancients comes with gentle breath as over a hill of roses. And there is no other series of monuments which seems to take us so readily into the daily life of the Greeks and to make us feel that they were men and women of like nature with ourselves, no longer cold and classic, but full of the warm blood and the gentle affections of ordinary humanity.

It is the natural pathos and the artistic charm of the family groups which adorn the majority of the tombs of ancient Athens, which strongly impress all visitors to that beautiful city, even visitors to whom most of the works of Greek sculpture do not convey any strong emotion. There is scarcely any one, however hardened by Puritanic training or the ubiquitous ugliness of modern surroundings against what is simple and true and lovely in art, who does not feel, through the hard shell of Philistinism, some touchings of sympathy and delight, if he spends a morning in the Cerameicus, or an afternoon in the sepulchral rooms of the National Museum. The influence of ancient Athens has made the cemetery of modern Athens, in spite of many incongruities, one of the most beautiful in the world. If, with the remembrance of Athens still fresh, we visit the great cemeteries of London, it is impossible to express the feeling of ugliness and bad taste, of jejuneness in design and poverty of execution with which they oppress the spirits. Religious hope and consolation are among us, a chill resignation was the natural attitude of the Greeks in the presence of death; and yet we counterbalance the superiority of our religion by the inferiority of our taste and perceptions.

It is very notable how complete in all these representations is the predominance of women, and how domestic is their tone. This fact can only be explained when we consider that these monuments belong, in the great majority of cases, to the time after the political greatness of Athens had been shattered at the battle of Aegospotami. In ancient Greece generally, and more especially at Athens, men gave to their wives and families only such time and care as they could spare from more engrossing occupations. By nature the Athenians were intensely political. And while Athens was a ruling power, and every citizen had a part in the game of politics played on a great scale, it was to public life that their thoughts and energies were directed, and the life of the home remained very much in the background. Every scholar is familiar with the contemptuous language applied by Aristophanes and Euripides to women; and Xenophon in his _Oeconomics_ regards that girl as best bred who had seen and heard the least, and had but the virtue of modesty. Secluded homes like these were not likely to claim very much of the life of the man whose whole soul was bent on the extension of the Athenian Empire. The fact is that all noble deeds in the world are bought at a price, and part of the price paid for the unrivalled burst of public splendour at Athens in the fifth century was the seclusion of women and the institution of slavery.

But even in the _Oeconomics_ of Xenophon we have the picture of a worthy citizen who gives much time and care to his home and his wife. And as public life decayed in the fourth century, and as manners became less severe, women became a more important element in the life of the community. The wife was no longer looked on as merely necessary for the production of citizens, while the courtesan accumulated vast wealth, and sometimes built temples or gave away cities. It is in the fourth century that a growing sympathy for child-life makes the children in Attic sculpture cease to be little men and women, and become real children. And it is the art of the fourth century which gives for the first time a noble and ideal expression of the life of the family, and the mutual love of its members.

The best plan will be, first to set before the reader several characteristic specimens of family groups, and afterwards to discuss the questions, many and not easily answered, which they suggest.

On Pl. XVIII will be found a somewhat exceptional subject, father and children only. Seated on a chair of the convenient domestic shape, Euempolus, as he is styled in the inscription, holds in one hand a bird, and extends a finger of the other hand to the children in front of him, of whom the nearer, clad in an over-garment only, seems to be a boy; the further, who wears also a tunic, is apparently a girl. Both have their long hair done up in a roll, and both have the stiff air which is usual in case of children of the fifth century. Another work of the same early period is the stele of Xanthippus in the British Museum (Fig. 65)[191]. The object in the hand of Xanthippus has been a puzzle to archaeologists. The prevailing view takes it for a shoe-maker’s last, and supposes that Xanthippus, far from being ashamed of his trade, glories in it even on his

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tomb. But an objection to this view is that trades were certainly not held in high honour among freemen anywhere in Greece. The name Xanthippus too, which belonged to the family of Pericles, was one of the noblest at Athens, and it seems impossible that it can have been borne by a mere cobbler. It seems more likely therefore that what Xanthippus really holds is a votive offering; perhaps some memorial of a cure wrought on one of his feet by Asklepius. The other hand of the hero rests on the neck of his little daughter, while an older girl or perhaps his wife holds a bird. The work is almost contemporary with the Parthenon frieze; the monument most dignified and charming.

The earliest and one of the most interesting of the groups which represent a mother and her children is the so-called Leucothea relief in the Villa Albani (Pl. XIX). A mother, clad in a sleeved Ionic tunic and an over-dress, is seated dandling on her knee her youngest infant, a little girl who stretches out to her a loving hand. Under the seat is the matronly work-basket. In front two elder girls approach their mother, and behind them a maid-servant, also clad in the Ionian dress, brings a wreath.

Before the consideration of this delightful group begins, we must observe that the clumsy right hand of the infant and the head of the nurse are modern restorations. The rest of the design, though of archaic stiffness, and dating from a time not later than the Persian wars, shows the greatest promise. The arm of the mother as seen through the sleeve, and the forms of the infant’s body, are rendered with care and delicacy. It is only necessary to compare the details with those of the figures on the Harpy Tomb of Xanthus (Fig. 27) in order to recognize how vastly superior the artists of Greece proper at the time were to those of Lycia, especially in the sense of the proportions of the body, and the art of so arranging drapery as to display rather than to conceal them.

In most respects we clearly have here an ordinary scene from the life of the women’s apartments. The mother has risen and breakfasted, and the nurse brings her the children. And yet there are in the scene certain details which probably have a special meaning. The position and attitude of the two elder children remind us oddly of the little worshippers who appear in the corner of the Spartan relief. And the wreath, though no doubt flowers and ribbons were continually used by both men and women in Greece for the adornment

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of their persons, is yet one of the most usual and characteristic decorations of the tomb. It appears that here, as in almost all the designs with which we are to deal, there is some allusion to death, as well as to mere domestic happiness. This, however, is denied by some very competent archaeologists; and we must postpone further discussion of the subject until we have passed under review a certain number of characteristic examples of the class.

A very simple and noble specimen of fifth-century work represents a mother and son, Chaerestrata and Lysander[192] (Pl. XX). The mother is handing to the son by the wings a little bird. The son, a dignified youth, wrapped in his himation ‘like an image of modesty’ as Aristophanes puts it, stretches out one hand to receive the gift. On the Lycian Harpy Tomb, a youth presents in similar fashion to a seated male figure a dove held by the wings; and this bird, as the smallest and least expensive of animal offerings, was a very usual gift to the dead. Lysanias is almost beyond doubt the person in whose honour the tomb was set up, and his mother’s gift can scarcely have failed to convey to the mind of a Greek spectator some sepulchral significance.

A group of a very different kind appears in our next example[193] (Pl. XXI). A young man named Dion is giving his hand to a very beautiful seated woman, Mica, whose drapery is quite a model of arrangement. Her attention is divided between her companion and the mirror which she holds up in her left hand. The pair are probably husband and wife, and one may conjecture, though it is by no means certain, that it is the wife who died, and to whom her young husband has set up this beautiful monument[194]. A similar relief, though of a later period, found at Naples[195], bears a simple and graceful epitaph:--

This pledge of love for Aste Daphnis made,
Who loved her living, and desires her dead.

The name Mica, _Little-one_, is fanciful, and quite unlike the rather stately names usual at Athens. We might be tempted to see in the seated lady a courtesan; but this view falls to the ground when we compare other stelae. On one tomb a Mica is in company of a Philtate, _Dearest_; in another she gives her hand to an Ariste, _Best_[196]. In another beautiful relief of the fifth century another Mica takes leave of her husband Amphidemus, who is represented as a warrior setting out for war[197]. It would seem then that there were certain families at Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries which chose to give fanciful names to their daughters. Generally speaking, the names both of men and women were assigned for sober family reasons, and not in mere caprice.

Before we consider the meaning of the sepulchral family groups, and compare them one with another, it will be well to bring before the reader a variety of typical examples, which we will briefly describe in turn, passing, whenever possible, from the simpler to the more complex, and from the less expressive to the more expressive.

First, we have a series of groups in which the main idea is leave-taking.

Pl. XXII. A lady clad in the sleeved Ionian chiton and over-dress, seated, gives her hand to another who stands before her. Between the two, in the background, stands a bearded man whose head rests on his hand[198]. The imperfect perspective of the group, which may be observed specially in the breast of the seated lady and in the footstool, seems to indicate the fifth

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century as date. Nothing, except the somewhat pensive attitude of the man, indicates that we have here anything but an excerpt from the ordinary daily life of the women’s apartments.

Pl. XXIII. A seated lady, represented in somewhat better perspective, gives her hand to a bearded man who wears only the himation or cloak, and seems to hold in the left hand a strigil. Between the two, in the background, stands a second lady in the accustomed pensive attitude. Behind the mistress’s seat stands a young slave-girl, clad in the long-sleeved chiton usually worn by maid-servants, her hair wrapped in a kerchief. In the face of the seated figure is a certain eagerness or intensity of expression, which lifts the group somewhat above the level of everyday life; besides which, the symbolism of the sphinx, which is used as a support to the arm of the chair, has a sepulchral meaning. Above the seated figure is inscribed her name, Damasistrata, daughter of Polycleides.

Pl. XXIV[199]. A lady, seated in the same fashion as in the last two reliefs, stretches both her hands towards a matron who stands before her, and who lightly touches her face with the right hand. Behind the seated figure stands a young girl; beneath the seat is a dove feeding. Here the expression of the two principal persons, leaning one towards the other and tenderly embracing one another, has an obvious significance. It is no embrace of daily life, but one which goes before a long parting. The frame in which this relief stands is a modern restoration.

Fig. 66[200]. A young woman, identified by the inscription as Plangon, daughter of Tolmides, falls back, evidently fainting with illness, on a couch. She is supported by a maid-servant, whose rank is indicated by the kerchief which binds her hair, and by her mother, whose extended arms signify sympathy and grief. The father, Tolmides, stands on the left in an attitude of

grief. This is an almost unique representation of the moment of death. Nearly always the Attic artist, whose invariable feeling is ‘nothing in extremes,’ avoids thus clearly portraying the last struggle, and contents himself with some gentle hint of death. Here, by a very instructive variation, he is more explicit. And his fortunate freedom from convention throws back a light on the other scenes which we have passed in review. One of the epitaphs in the _Anthology_[201] describes

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a painted scene of a similar character, depicted on the tomb of a lady named Neotima, who was represented lying back in the exhaustion of death, brought about by childbirth, while her mother Mnasylla hung over her, and her father Aristoteles stood by, resting his head on his hand, in the usual attitude of grief. Curiously enough, the presence of the husband is not mentioned, nor even his name. Perhaps the commonness of death in childbirth at Athens needs a word of explanation. It may be accounted for partly perhaps by the sedentary life of Athenian women, but more especially by the fact that help in the crisis was not usually afforded by physicians, but by midwives, who had had no training save that which is gained by practice. The resort to male accoucheurs was condemned by the instinctive delicacy of the Attic women.

We must cite one more relief of this class, though it is of interest not for the representation which it bears, which is quite ordinary, but for the inscription[202]. A seated woman, veiled, gives her hand to a standing veiled figure, a bearded man standing in the background. Over the head of the seated figure is inscribed, Χοιρίνη τίτθη. Choerine then is a wet-nurse, and the lady to whom she gives her hand is probably her foster-child whom she has brought up, and who, even after marriage, retains affection for her old nurse, and erects a monument in honour of her fidelity. This monument stands by no means alone; it is one of many set up both by men and women in memory of their nurses. Such facts show that in Greece, though the nurse would commonly be a slave, natural affection and gratitude often triumphed over social convention, and she was regarded as a friend rather than as a dependant.

Another group of reliefs is even more thoroughly feminine. It is dominated by the idea of adornment. The well-born ladies of Athens took, as we know, great pains to enhance by art the charms which nature had liberally bestowed upon them. The rouge-pot was a well-known part of their arsenal, and is sometimes found in their graves. They were not, like modern women, the humble slaves of a fashion which constantly changes. The form and disposition of their garments varies but little from century to century. But they were very particular as to pattern and texture, and very careful that each garment should fall in the most graceful and becoming folds. For jewelry they seem to have had a strong liking, and it may be urged as a palliation of so frivolous a taste that the Greek jewelry which has come down to us is in very good taste. The custom of adorning oneself with huge diamonds and rubies, as a proof of wealth, would have been considered barbaric in Greece. Jewelry was mainly of gold, or even gilt bronze, of little material value, but wrought by cunning workmen, in complete disregard of time, with exquisite care and subtilty[203], so as to be in itself a thing of art as well as a mere decoration. If stones were inserted in the metal, they were quite common stones, sards and onyxes and the like, not cut in facets, but carved in the form of scarabs, or engraved with beautifully cut designs in intaglio. Like the dress, the pottery, and the coins of the Greeks, and all the other surroundings of their life, their jewels exhibited on a smaller scale the same unrivalled artistic taste which is shown on a larger scale by their temples and their sculpture.

Pl. XXV. Hegeso, daughter of Proxenus, is seated to left on a chair which is admirably shaped alike for comfort and steadiness. Her hair is bound with a beautifully arranged kerchief; she wears the fine Ionic chiton with sleeves and an over-dress. She is looking at a necklace which she has drawn from a box held by a serving-girl, and which she holds in both

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hands. This necklace must have been represented either by help of colour or metal. The slave-girl’s more simple dress contrasts with the elegance of that of her mistress. The work seems to belong to the early part of the fourth century. This monument is not in the Museum of Athens, but remains in its place in the Cemetery by the Gate.

Pl. XXVI. We have once more a group of lady and jewel-box. But here the attendant who brings the box seems from her dress to be no slave, but a sister or relative. And the seated lady is not here attracted by the jewels, but sits in pensive attitude; it may be, however, that her right hand, which is near her neck, is holding a necklace already adjusted. In some of the details in this relief there is clumsiness, for example in the right arm of the standing figure; nevertheless the design is very graceful.

Pl. XXVII. Here is a further variation. The standing sister or friend, Demostrate, is evidently trying to tempt the taste of the seated Ameiniche by offering her jewels, but cannot even attract her attention. With one hand resting on the seat of the squarely made chair, Ameiniche looks pensively outwards. The artist seems to imply that when personal adornment ceases to interest a woman, the shadow of fate is not far away.

A relief published in the _Corpus_[204], on which is depicted a lady and her attendant, the former fastening a bracelet, bears an inscription which at once interests us (Fig. 67). The seated lady is named Phaenarete, a name borne by the mother of Socrates. It would be a strange freak of fortune if it had preserved to us the tomb of the mother of Socrates, engaged in an occupation scarcely in harmony with the character of her son. It is curious that there is something to be said in favour of this view, and no decisive argument against it. The date of

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the relief is given by Furtwängler[205] as the Pheidian age; most archaeologists would probably place it rather later, but still well within the fifth century. Phaenarete gave birth to Socrates about B.C. 470; but when she died we know not: there is certainly no reason why she should not have died at about the date of execution of this relief. Whether she was old or young at the time of her death would make no serious difference; on her tomb an ideal figure would appear and no true portrait.

But it may be said that the parents of Socrates were poor; his father Sophroniscus was a second-rate sculptor, his mother was a midwife[206]: is it likely that such people could afford so expensive a tomb? To which it may be replied that Socrates certainly inherited a small fortune. And it appears that the fine tombs at Athens did not belong by any means exclusively to the wealthy class. Again, Sophroniscus was a sculptor; a tomb of somewhat sumptuous style would therefore cost him far less than the usual price. And the profession of a midwife, in a city where such duties were undertaken ordinarily by women, might be fairly lucrative.

On the other hand, the name Phaenarete does not appear to have been at all rare at Athens. It occurs on three or four existing stelae, some of which belong to the fifth century[207]. Much therefore as we should desire to find in our stele a record of the mother of Socrates executed either by Sophroniscus, or even by Socrates himself, who in his youth followed his father’s craft, we cannot do so with any confidence. Such an attribution remains a bare possibility, and we have no means of testing it.

Pl. XXVIII. Here there are obviously preparations for a journey. The principal figure is Ameinocleia, daughter of Andromenes. She is clad in a long chiton and an over-dress which serves also as a veil. A slave is putting on her sandal, during which process she steadies herself by resting a hand on the girl’s head. In front is a friend who bears a box of jewelry. The fair Ameinocleia is evidently setting out on a journey. And it seems evident that there is an allusion to a solemn departure on a journey whence none returns, although in the details of the representation we find no clear suggestion of death. That is unnecessary when the whole group is itself an allusion to it.

Some writers have doubted whether in the scenes of hand-taking and of adornment there be anything beyond an ordinary scene of daily life, a domestic interior. The stele of Ameinocleia furnishes reasons for declining to agree with them. As we have seen, in the hand-taking scenes more emotion is commonly visible than an ordinary family scene would warrant. And reflection soon shows that even in scenes of adornment the notion of parting is in place. The Greek lady especially adorned herself when she was preparing to go abroad, to take part, maybe, in some procession in honour of the gods or some marriage festivity. Thus the notions of adornment and of leaving home are naturally connected.

No doubt in these scenes there may be traced another element, one derived from the custom of placing ornaments in the tomb and bringing offerings to the dead. We can trace this influence by means of the paintings of the white lekythi of which we have spoken in Chapter II. On these vases are depicted innumerable scenes from the cult of the dead, among which we often find ladies seated and attendants bringing offerings. We engrave an example[208] (Fig. 68). Here the lady who is seated on the steps of the tomb seems to be the person for whom that tomb was made. She holds on her knees a box of jewelry; on either side of the tomb stands a maid-servant. In other instances[209] the maids bring unguent-vases, fans, and

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other articles of the toilet. These groups, however, are but translations into the realm of death of scenes of daily life, such as are common on Attic vases of the fifth and fourth centuries. These vases often show us the interior of the women’s apartments, with ladies dressing or engaged in domestic occupation. As an example we may take a pyxis published by Dumont[210], on which are depicted a lady with her hair down, to whom one maid brings a necklace, and another a vessel of ointment, and another lady whose shoe is being laced by a slave-girl. Another vase, published by Heydemann[211] (Fig. 69), shows us a seated woman to whom an attendant brings a box of jewelry, and a family group of father, mother, and child. The likeness of these groups to those of the sepulchral reliefs is striking.

The question which is the original in art, the domestic interior or the offering at the tomb, is not an easy one. The former class of scenes is Ionic, the latter Doric in character. Both make their appearance on Attic works at about the same time. It is a case like that of the meeting of two streams, when it is impossible to say which is the main river and which the tributary.

We have already observed (Chap. VIII) that a not unfrequent form of monument at Athens in the later period was a flat slab (τράπεζα), in which were inserted one or more stone lekythi adorned with reliefs. The reliefs are in such cases ordinarily family groups; and the juxtaposition of several of these lekythi in museums has demonstrated some facts not without interest. It appears that sometimes when a family grave was acquired, and covered with a slab, a pair of marble vases were inserted in it, the reliefs of both of which comprise

the same set of persons in a somewhat varied arrangement. An instance is engraved (Figs. 70, 71). On these lekythi[212] Callistomache appears seated, Aristion and Timagora standing; the main difference is that in one case the seated lady faces the right, in the other case the left. On another pair of lekythi we see two husbands, Mys and Meles, with their wives, Metrodora and Philia. On one vase the two husbands have joined hands, while the women stand behind them; on the other vase the wives have joined hands, while the men stand in the background[213]. Sometimes on the lekythi which stood together, either on the same slab or on slabs closely adjacent, we can trace the successive generations of Athenian citizens, their names recurring commonly in alternate generations.

In a very few instances a deity makes his appearance in the ordinary family groups. The deity who thus intervenes is always Hermes, the guide of souls (Psychopompus), who leads them down the dangerous road to the world of spirits.

Most noteworthy among the stelae on which Hermes appears is that shaped in the form of a lekythus, and bearing the name Myrrhina[214] (Fig. 72). In the relief we see the graceful figure of the lady, closely wrapped up and veiled, giving her hand to Hermes, who leads her forth, looking back at her the while. An old man and youths, probably the father and brothers of Myrrhina, stand, the former with raised hand in the attitude appropriate to adoration[215].

This is doubtless a real tombstone; but the same can scarcely be said of the beautiful relief which represents the final parting of Orpheus and Eurydice (Pl. XXIX). Orpheus has dared the perils of the world below and surmounted them. He has led the recovered Eurydice to the very confines of the world of shades; and at that moment his disobedience to the law of Hades, which forbade him to look back, has once more deprived him of his bride. Hermes claims her back, and the lovers must part finally[216]. That this beautiful relief, the date of the original of which is about 400 B.C., has some connexion with the grave seems clear; the subject is sepulchral, and the sentiment of the group, gentle and subdued, is closely like that of Athenian tombs. At the same time the form of the relief, low and broad, proves that it is not part of an ordinary monument: rather it was meant to be inserted in a wall. It may be a sort of ‘elegant extract,’ like so many of the copies of the Roman age. The subject and treatment of some celebrated sepulchral monument may have been copied in marble for a Roman amateur, and taken out of its original connexion.