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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



some of them were and remained unfinished ; the 

 completeness of their disappearance is proved by 

 the silence of Pausanias the traveler, who, pass- 

 ing through all quarters of Athens in the time 

 of the Antonines, would appear to have seen no 

 trace of them. All of the monuments in this 

 group are of course indubitably Athenian, and 

 furnish the best materials for the present paper. 

 Of the stones in the museum it is sometimes im- 

 possible to trace the find-spot ; some are Boeotian, 

 some from Peloponnesus, some from the islands. 

 But this uncertainty need not debar us from free- 

 ly referring to almost any as instances, for there 

 is no great or essential difference between Athe- 

 nian and other gravestones. It will be quite fair 

 to treat, for the present purpose, all monuments 

 preserved at Athens as Athenian, unless they be 

 known to have come from a distance. Of the 

 longer inscriptions a large proportion are from 

 the tombs of foreign residents at Athens. 



To the readers who are likely to peruse these 

 pages, there are but two points in gravestones 

 likely to prove very interesting : 1. The reliefs 

 which they bear ; l 2. The inscriptions engraven 

 on them. 



The earliest of Athenian sepulchral monu- 

 ments, if we leave out of account buildings like 

 the Cyclopean tombs of Mycenae, or mounds like 

 those recently opened with such splendid results 

 at Spata, in Attica, is the often-cited stele of 

 Aristion. It represents the deceased on a scale 

 somewhat larger than life, as standing clad in full 

 armor, spear in hand. The ground of the relief 

 is red ; traces of color may be seen, or rather 

 might at the time of discovery be seen, on many 

 parts of the body, and holes may be observed 

 made by the pegs which fastened armor of bronze 

 on to the body. The design or idea of this slab 

 differs not much from that of a portrait statue. 

 Clearly in early Greek times, for this statue is given 

 to the very beginning of the fifth century b. c, the 

 survivors wished to see in the monument the 

 dead, as it were, still living among them, still to 

 be seen in his daily dress, and about his daily 

 business. 



But it is from the fourth and succeeding cen- 

 turies before the Christian era, that we inherit the 

 great mass of the sculptured tombstones which 

 crowd the museums. No one can spend a few 

 hours among these without perceiving that the 



1 On the subject of these reliefs there is no complete 

 work, but several monographs, the best of which are 

 those of Friedlander and Pervanoglu. Where my own 

 notes fail I have quoted the descriptions of the latter 

 writer. 



representations fall naturally into four or five 

 classes. 



The first class and the most extensive consists 

 of formal groups wanting in distinctive character, 

 which display the dead either alone or in com- 

 pany with others. The companions, where there 

 are such, are sometimes other members of the 

 family, sometimes slaves or attendants, who, in 

 accordance with the well-known canon of Greek 

 art, which gives larger stature to the person of 

 more importance, are always represented as of 

 diminutive size. Sometimes the companion is not 

 a person at all, but a favorite animal, a pet dog 

 or bird. Such subjects are common in Mace- 

 donian times. The grouping is usually simple 

 and graceful, the attitudes natural and unforced, 

 the movements, if movement there be, measured. 

 But the execution is not of the best, save in a few 

 remarkable cases, and there is a want of inven- 

 tion, nay, there is even vulgarity, in the designs. 

 Like our modern photographers, the inferior 

 Greek artists who condescended to this kind of 

 work had a few cardinal notions as to possibilities 

 of arrangement, and could not easily be induced 

 to depart from them. I will give the details of a 

 few reliefs of this class : 1. A seated lady, who 

 with her left hand holds the end of the veil which 

 covers her face ; before her stands a man, facing 

 her. 2. A pair of sisters, Demetria and Pamphile. 

 Pamphile is seated, and turns her head toward 

 the spectator ; with her right hand she grasps 

 the end of her veil. Demetria stands over against 

 her, her right hand folded across her breast, and 

 grasps her veil with her left hand. 3. A man 

 clad in long himation stands, in his hand a scroll. 

 In front of him stands a small male figure, naked, 

 holding a vessel, perhaps an oil-flask. The scroll 

 which the master holds and the flask of the slave 

 seem here to have as little meaning as the books 

 and the flower-baskets of photographic rooms. 

 4. A mother clad in flowing Ionian drapery is 

 seated to left. Her left hand rests on the seat ; 

 with her right she lifts something from a little 

 toilet-box which a servant holds out. Bound 

 her knees clings a little girl. 5. A lad stands 

 clasping to his breast a bird which a snake at his 

 feet threatens and springs upward to reach. In 

 other reliefs we find a dog in the place of the 

 snake ; sometimes a dog is standing elsewhere in 

 the picture. Tame birds -would seem to have 

 been the usual playmates of Athenian children, 

 and tame dogs the constant companions of young 

 men, while in many houses a favorite which would 

 be rarely appreciated in England, a snake, was 

 nurtured. 



