CHAPTER XFAMILY GROUPS

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with painting[167], and bearing the inscription, Î›Ï…Ïƒá½²á¾³ á¼�Î½Î¸Î¬Î´Îµ Ïƒá¿†Î¼Î± Ï€Î±Ï„á½´Ï� Î£Î®Î¼Ï‰Î½ á¼�Ï€ÎÎ¸Î·ÎºÎµÎ½. 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. IXB). 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: â€˜Alxenor of Naxos fashioned me: only look!â€™

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 FurtwÃ¤ngler, 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.

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 isof 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.

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 (Î¬Î»Ï„á¿†Ï�ÎµÏ‚) 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.

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,

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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 otherâ€™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: â€˜Set up by Amphalces in memory of Dermys and Citylus.â€™

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.10and69). 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 Î½Î±á¿—Î´Î¹Î¿Î½ 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.

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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 394B.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. Paulâ€™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 celestialreward. 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.

FIG. 56. WARRIOR OF TEGEA.

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

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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 masterâ€™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, á¼ˆÎ³Î±Î¸ÏŒÎºÎ»Î· Ï‡Î±á¿–Ï�Îµ, 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 actuallyfound 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.

FIG. 57. ATHLETE BALANCING STONE.

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 horsemanâ€™s cloak, the chlamys. The reins were filled in in bronze; the holes for fixing the metal being still visible in the horseâ€™s mouth and neck. The easy and masterly

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

FIG. 58. YOUNG HORSEMAN.

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 maycome 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 Archiasâ€™ 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 takeAround; 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

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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.

FIG. 59. STELE OF DEMOCLEIDES.

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 eitheran 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 theAnthology[181], by an unknown writer, was evidently written to be placed under some such representation as this:—

A vesselâ€™s oars and prow I here behold.O cease! why paint them oâ€™er the ashes cold?Nay! let the shipwrecked sailor undergroundForget the fate which â€™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

FIG. 60. ELDERLY MAN, FROM STELE.

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.

FIG. 61. BOY, FROM STELE.

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

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FIG. 62. PORTRAIT OF MYNNO.

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 theCorpus. In another early relief (Fig. 62), which bears the name of Mynno[184], we may see under the seat of the ladya work basket, such as we have already observed placed under the so-called Penelopeâ€™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 Mynnoâ€™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 girlâ€™s head is a tall circular crown, of the kind called by archaeologists thepolus, 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

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FIG. 63.GIRL WITH DOLL.FIG. 64.PRIESTESS OF ISIS.

FIG. 63.GIRL WITH DOLL.

FIG. 64.PRIESTESS OF ISIS.

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 ordrum, 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.

Wenext 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. Theinfluence 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 hisOeconomicsregards 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 theOeconomicsof 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-makerâ€™s last, and supposes that Xanthippus, far from being ashamed of his trade, glories in it even on his

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FIG. 65. XANTHIPPUS AND CHILDREN.

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, whilean 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 infantâ€™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 womenâ€™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 â€˜like an image of modestyâ€™ 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 motherâ€™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, thoughof a later period, found at Naples[195], bears a simple and graceful epitaph:—

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