Chapter XIII: Later Monuments of Asia Minor

The sepulchral monuments of Greece Proper are all on a modest scale, and noteworthy on account of their beauty of design and charm of sentiment rather than for their magnificence or costliness. In order to find sumptuous tombs erected by Greek architects and decorated by the great Greek sculptors, we must cross over into Asia. We have in a previous chapter spoken of some of the monuments of Asia Minor which are contemporary with the earliest tombs of Greece. We have now to observe how Greece in the later fifth and the fourth centuries paid back the artistic debt which she owed to Asia. The custom of erecting magnificent memorials of departed rulers long prevailed in all parts of Asia. And when Greece stood without a rival in the arts of architecture and sculpture, it was natural that the wealthy princes who planned the monuments of their predecessors, or sometimes their own destined tombs, should import Greek artists, and allow them a free hand to produce great mausoleums, in which the art of Greece registered in beautiful forms the affection of kinsfolk and the veneration of subject populations.

Without at all intending to exhaust the subject, I propose to give some account of a few of the most noteworthy of these monuments, especially of the Nereid monument and the Gyeulbashi heroon in Lycia, and the Mausoleum a Halicarnassus. These tombs I select not as typical of their age and country, but rather as exceptional. They represent the almost complete victory in Asia not only of Greek art, but even of Greek ideas. Side by side with these monuments there were erected in Asia Minor, and especially in Lycia, tombs in which native tendencies, such as we have seen in an earlier chapter were still dominant. Sir Charles Fellows brought from Lycia some tombs of this character, and casts of the reliefs of others which remain in their site. The most interesting representation is from a tomb at Cadyanda[291], on which we see banqueting scenes, dancing figures, a group of four girls playing with knucklebones, and so forth, with bilingual inscriptions in Greek and Lycian. But to comment on these scenes as if they were of Hellenic origin would lead us far astray. Like the paintings and reliefs of Etruria, they represent a peculiar and lost phase of civilization, thinly veneered by the art and thought of Hellas.

In his third journey through Lycia, in 1842, Sir Charles Fellows discovered, not far from the agora of Xanthus, a lofty stone basis, some 33 feet by 22 in dimensions; and in close connexion with it a large quantity of reliefs and of fragments of Ionic architecture[292]. Leaving the basis where it stood, he brought to England the sculpture; and by the labours of English archaeologists the tomb to which both basis and sculpture belonged has been reconstructed. I repeat the restoration of Falkener[293], which has been accepted by Overbeck and other authorities (Fig. 74). The restoration is not in all points certain. As the basis remains there cannot be any question as to its form and the position of the sculptured friezes which adorned it. And the examination of the upper surface of the basis established a pteron or line of columns all round, with statues standing in the intercolumniations. But as to the position of the friezes which belong to the upper part of the monument, and as to the acroteria which Falkener places on the top of all, there remains considerable uncertainty. The whole of the sculpture may be studied in the British Museum, and is published by Professor Michaelis in the tenth volume of the Roman _Monumenti dell’ Instituto_.

From the present point of view the most important of

the scenes depicted on this monument is to be found in one of the pediments[294] (Fig. 75). The hero of whom the tomb is a memorial is seated in state, sceptre in hand: his wife sits opposite, and the children are grouped about them. Further to the right are attendants on a smaller scale. One dog is asleep under the master’s chair, another lies in the corner of the pediment. In the other pediment there is a warlike scene, of which only one-half is preserved. The midmost figure, doubtless the hero again, is on horseback[295] charging an overthrown foe, to whose aid his companions, clad as Greek hoplites, hurry forward. The representation here is no doubt of some notable feat of arms of the owner of the tomb. To the warlike scene the peaceful scene first described corresponds. At first sight it seems merely a picture out of daily life: but if we bear in mind the ordinary symbolism of the Greek tomb we may fairly find in it some sepulchral significance. The grouping of the children about their parents reminds us of many Attic sepulchral reliefs, and the train of attendants bears a decided resemblance to the group of votaries usual on heroizing reliefs. In fact, we find here what is called by archaeologists a contamination. The Asiatic custom of regarding a tomb as a monument of the fame and a record of the exploits of some great ruler or leader of men is penetrated by the genius of Attic sepulchral art, and takes new and more beautiful forms.

Treating the two pediments as striking the keynote of the whole sculptural adornment of the monument, we shall not hesitate to find in all its representations allusions to the life and exploits of the hero whom it commemorates. But of the four friezes which encircled the building at various heights, three furnish us with information which is too vague to be historically useful. The theme of the first is battle, of the third hunting, of the fourth feasting and repose. It is only the frieze numbered as the second in the publications which gives us more detailed and accurate information. Here are unfolded to us the successive scenes of the siege and capture of a hostile city; the battle before the walls, the attempt to storm and the defence, the parleying and surrender, the escape of some of the inhabitants and the leading into captivity of others. In the scene of capitulation the central figure is an Eastern king or ruler, in Persian cap; behind him an attendant bears a sunshade; around him stand his guards. This potentate is approached by two elderly men, staid and dignified, who are clearly the representatives of the city, and come asking for terms. In other scenes we find a bold but a necessarily unsuccessful attempt to represent without due perspective the city walls with the heads of the defenders showing above them, the women wailing, the attacking force adjusting the ladders for scaling, or repulsing sorties of the besieged.

The siege and the capture of a hostile city was evidently one of the most notable events of the life of the hero of the monument. With some plausibility archaeologists have found allusion to the same siege in the beautiful figures of women which stood between the columns of the pteron, the temple-like structure which crowned the monument. These figures represent young girls in the dress of Attic maidens flying in haste and alarm from some danger which threatens them. At their feet are various marine creatures: the dolphin, the sea-snake, a crab, a water-bird, or a fish. This curious circumstance has given rise to the commonly accepted view that they represent Nereid nymphs hastily escaping over the surface of the sea from some rude alarm, flying in disorder to their father Nereus, as they do on more than one vase when Peleus has laid hands on their sister Thetis. What more likely to cause a panic among the shy and peaceful ladies of the sea than a marine battle, or even the attack of an army on a city of the seacoast?

Urlichs has tried to show that all the historical indications which may be derived from the frieze of the siege and from the presence of the flying Nereids may be explained if we assign the tomb to the king or satrap, Pericles of Xanthus, who, as we learn from a fragment of Theopompus, laid siege to the neighbouring city of Telmessus, and after a stubborn resistance compelled it to capitulate. Before we can accept or reject this theory we must briefly consider two questions. Is an actual historic event depicted on the tomb, or is the representation merely of a mythical siege of the past? And what is the date of the monument?

As to the first of these questions I have already sufficiently indicated my view. The sculptural history of the siege is too detailed and precise to be a rendering of a merely typical or ideal siege. The two emissaries of the besiegers must have had prototypes, and recent prototypes, in real life; and the king before whom they stand is no mythical chief, but the ruler for whom the tomb was made. This has been disputed by Wolters, but the general consensus of archaeologists is against him.

On the other point, the date of the monument, there has been much wider divergence of opinion. At first, in England, it was placed in the sixth century, as a monument of the conquest of Xanthus by Harpagus, the general of Cyrus. This, however, is quite impossible. Soon the pendulum swung too far in the other direction, and the sculpture was brought down to the fourth century, and even connected with the school of Scopas. The date fixed by Furtwängler[296], the latter part of the fifth century, is now generally accepted. In the forms of the Nereids we may trace the artistic influence of the Victory of Paeonius, set up about B.C. 424. And if some of the figures of the friezes be carefully considered they will be found to show traces of undeveloped art, even of archaism. The Nereid monument belongs to the age of the Parthenon and the temple of Athena Nike, not to the age of the Mausoleum.

If therefore we were compelled, as Urlichs supposed, to assign the taking of Telmessus by Pericles to so late a date as the 102nd Olympiad (B.C. 372), we should be obliged to give up its assignment to that king. But there is no conclusive reason for the date fixed by Urlichs. There is therefore no improbability that our monument may be a memorial of Pericles of Xanthus. In any case it has an important place among the remains of antiquity, because it stands in the line of descent, a line marked by many lacunae, which connects the mural reliefs of Assyria, with their fulness of historic detail, and the magnificent monuments of imperial Rome. The Nereid Monument and that of Gyeulbashi, as well as some of the sarcophagi from Sidon, with which I shall deal in the fifteenth chapter, naturally strike the student as being set in a key somewhat different from that of ordinary Greek sculpture. The mythological scenes portrayed on them find ready parallels in Greece, but the more historic scenes carry our minds to the wall-sculptures of Assyria or the reliefs of Roman columns, such as those of Trajan and Aurelius, rather than to other Greek works. The reason of this is probably that the art of these Asiatic monuments is influenced by that of Ionia, which is to us, unfortunately, but little known. The Ionian tendency was towards history, that of the Dorians towards religion. The great Greek painters, following Ionian precedent, celebrated in their works many historic battles. Bularchus in very early times is said to have portrayed, for a Lydian king, a victory of the Magnesians: Panaenus painted at Athens the battle of Marathon, Androcydes of Cyzicus painted for the Thebans a picture of their victory at Plataea, and Euphranor depicted the battle of Mantineia. But in Greece sculpture took a different and more ideal line, and translated the battles of the present into mythic combats of the past, in which Centaurs and Amazons rather than fellow-Greeks represented the vanquished party. The sculpture of the Nereid monument is dominated by a more realistic and historic spirit. The sculpture at Gyeulbashi is on the border-line, so that we find it hard to decide whether the scene of the siege there portrayed is Ilium or Lycia, and whether the battles are being fought on the windy plain of Troy or the southern coast of Asia Minor. The sculpture of the Mausoleum is of the purely Greek and ideal character. But the greatest of the Sidonian sarcophagi returns, as we shall see, in the age of Alexander the Great, to a more realistic level.

The heroon of Gyeulbashi was discovered in the heart of Lycia by Schönborn in 1842. For a long time the discovery remained almost unnoticed. But a few years ago an Austrian expedition was sent to secure such remains of the monument as have artistic value, and these are now deposited in the Museum of Vienna. Unfortunately they have suffered terribly, being of limestone and not of marble, from exposure to the weather, and some of the friezes have almost perished. Casts of the better-preserved portions are to be found at South Kensington and Oxford. And the whole monument is published in the completest and most satisfactory form by Professor Benndorf[297].

In form the heroon differs entirely, as will be seen from the engraving (Fig. 76) from other Lycian monuments. The actual grave is a modest construction in the form of a sarcophagus surmounted by a cover with gables. This stands transversely within a walled enclosure some 78 feet long by 68 wide, inside measurement. The enclosing wall is built solidly of squared stones. And it is this which is the interesting part of the whole; for the wall is adorned without and within with a series of reliefs, presenting us with a whole gallery of representations remarkable alike for their style and their subjects, some of which are portrayed nowhere else in the whole range of Greek sculpture.

The keynote here again is furnished by the group of seated heroic personages. This group is sculptured over the door through which the enclosure is entered; unfortunately it has so severely suffered that the details are obscure. The great lintel stone over the doorway is decorated as follows. Above are the foreparts of four winged bulls, separated by rosettes and a gorgon-head. Immediately below these are seated two pairs of figures, in each case male and female. The men are bearded, the women veiled. Husband and wife are turned towards one another, and behind the wife in each group stands a girl, a daughter or servant, holding in one instance a casket, in the other raising her arms in an attitude of sorrow.

These two heroic pairs are probably the proprietors of the sacred enclosure, which was built like a finely carved casket to hold their ashes. In the decoration of the casket we find one Oriental motive. Over the door inside is a line of dwarfs, or of repetitions of the Egyptian monster Bes, holding musical instruments or dancing. Here we have a touch lent by a religion less refined and artistic than that of the anthropomorphic Greeks. The rest of the reliefs take their subjects from the legendary tales of Greece. We do not appear to have here, as on the Nereid monument, allusions to the lives of the buried heroes. There is no scene which bears the impress of history. The Greek artists who were employed by the wealthy Lycian family to adorn the wall seem to have been left quite free in their choice of subjects. So they run on almost without plan, from tale to tale and from scene to scene. Sometimes we have two subjects, one above the other, quite independent one of the other. Sometimes the two lines of decorations are occupied with a single scene.

It would be useless to attempt to describe in detail scenes which we are unable to set before the eyes of the reader. The landing of the Greeks at Troy, the siege of the City, the battle of Achilles with the Amazons who come to its rescue, Odysseus meeting Penelope, and shooting down the suitors, are taken from the cycle of Trojan legend. Then we have the hunting of the Calydonian boar, the carrying off of the daughters of Leucippus, the expedition of the Seven against Thebes, all portrayed with the freedom which Greek artists use, always ready to subordinate strict fidelity to tradition to the necessities of art and the love of balance and measure. The interest of those scenes is great, but it does not belong to our subject. The art is not sepulchral, but of the myth-loving kind which prevails in the decoration of Greek temples, and which once marked the lost masterpieces of the great Greek painters. Professor Benndorf has tried, and not unsuccessfully, to prove that in the reliefs of Gyeulbashi we may find clear traces of the influence of the great Thasian painter Polygnotus, another of whose lines of influence reached the sculptors of the Parthenon. The Lycian heroon and the Attic temple are works of about the same period, widely as they differ in some respects. At Athens the influence of Polygnotus is fairly and fully translated into sculptural style. In Lycia the sculptor has less transforming vigour, and he retains in the work of the chisel some conventions appropriate only to the work of the brush.

One other important tomb must be mentioned which was built in Asia, though its construction is purely Greek, its material the marble of Pentelicus, and its erection on the coast of Asia Minor no more than an instance of the fortune of war.

Among the discoveries, with the fruits of which Sir Charles Newton enriched the British Museum, there were few which he valued more highly than that of the Lion-tomb of Cnidus. The huge lion, which is now in the Mausoleum Room of the British Museum, reclined on the top of a building made solid to receive his vast weight, looking out over the Carian Sea. We engrave (Fig. 77) the whole monument as restored by Mr. Pullan[298].

It can scarcely be contended that the lion is a great work of sculpture. His size is imposing and his attitude monumental, but the head and body alike lack character and force. This is true of all the lions of Greek artists of the period, the great lion set up in memory of Chaeroneia, those which adorned the Mausoleum, and others. The fact is that the Greeks between the days of the Persian Wars and those of Alexander knew nothing of the lion, probably scarcely ever saw one, dead or alive. So their artistic and idealizing tendency had to work without constant reference to, and correction by, nature. Thus, while the types of the horse, the bull, and the dog went on developing on the lines of love and appreciation of nature, the type of the lion became fantastic and poor. The soul of the lion does not inhabit the bodies prepared for it by Greek artists.

Nevertheless the Cnidian monument has its interest. It is conjectured, with a high degree of probability, that it was set up by Conon, after his great victory of 394 B.C. over the Spartan fleet at Cnidus. It commemorates alike the battle and the Athenians who fell in it. It is an Attic tomb though not erected in Attica, more imposing as a historical monument than the reliefs of the Cerameicus, but inferior to them in the higher artistic qualities.

Our subject being Greek sculptured tombs, we must leave out of consideration one of the most important classes of Hellenic or semi-Hellenic graves, that which belongs to the Greek colonists of the Crimea and their barbarous Scythic allies[299]. In the neighbourhood of the ancient Panticapaeum, a city closely connected with Athens by ties of commerce and alliance, there are many mound-graves, which being opened have been found to contain lofty vaulted chambers, in shape and design not unlike the treasuries of Mycenae and Orchomenus, but of a far later age, belonging in fact mostly to the fourth century, which seems to have been the golden age of Panticapaeum. These graves have no important architectural features and no sculptural adornment. But they have in many cases preserved to our days their contents, a rich spoil of gold and bronze, of Greek vases and barbarous armour, of ornaments and coins. By an art-loving and paternal government, these important relics of the most northerly branch of the Hellenic stock have been carefully collected and preserved, forming to-day one of the most splendid attractions of the Hermitage Museum at St. Petersburg.

They are also luxuriously published in official publications of the Russian Government, offering to the student of history a new chapter, showing how, in the Crimea of old, Greek and Scythian met, how the Greek refined the Scythian and supplied him with admirable works of art, and how the Scythian lent the Greek armour and clothes, besides no doubt supplying him with timber, corn, and skins. And to the student of art they exhibit the richness and the taste displayed by Athenian craftsmen in the fourth century, in the production even of the smallest and least considered of the appliances of daily life.