THE GREEK MIND IN PRESENCE OF DEATH. 



267 



As this is the commonest class of reliefs, so 

 evidently it is the least original and interesting. 

 Here most is left to the sorry invention and feeble 

 sympathy of the sculptor, who knew naught of 

 the deceased, and allows us to know no more 

 than could be ascertained from the sources of 

 information which among the old Greeks corre- 

 sponded to the first column of the Times or the 

 pages of Burke with us. But it is by do means 

 rare to find on sepulchral slabs a more exact ref- 

 erence to the past life or the habits of the dead. 

 Sometimes we are told more than the bare fact 

 that the departed was father, mother, wife, or 

 sister — was young, old, or in the prime of life. I 

 select the following : 1. A youth, naked, or wear- 

 ing the light chlamys only, stands holding in his 

 hand the strigil and oil-flask, those invariable ac- 

 companiments of gymnastic exercises among the 

 Greeks. No doubt the survivors, who chose the 

 design, wished to indicate that their friend was 

 prominent in manly sports and labors. In this, 

 the field of his best energies, they wished him 

 still to seem to live. 2. A young man, clad in a 

 chlamys, charges with spear advanced a wild-boar, 

 which is coming out of its lair; at his side is 

 a dog, which leaps forward at the quarry. Above, 

 on a rock, stands a deer. We see at a glance that 

 this is the tomb of one who loved the chase. 3. 

 On a rock sits a man in an attitude of grief; be- 

 neath is the sea, and on it a boat with or without 

 sailors. It is a generally-received opinion that 

 monuments of this character were set up over 

 those who had been wrecked at sea. 4. A young 

 rider, clad in the light chlamys of the Athenian 

 cavalry, charges, at once trampling beneath his 

 horse's hoofs and transfixing with his spear a 

 fallen foe, who tries in vain with his shield to ward 

 off the attack of his triumphant enemy. From 

 the accompanying inscription we know that this 

 monument was erected in honor of Dexilaus, one 

 of the five horsemen at Corinth — that is to say, 

 as is supposed, one of the five horsemen who fell 

 in the battle under the walls of Corinth, in which 

 the Athenians were engaged in the year B. c. 394. 

 The relief thus dates almost from the best time 

 of Attic art, and it is worthy of its time. It does 

 not, of course, represent the moment of the death 

 of the young warrior; we see him strong and 

 triumphant, such as his friends would fain have 

 seen him always ; to show him fallen would have 

 suited an enemy rather than a friend. 5. Another 

 relief, although set up in honor of a man of 

 Ascalon, is clearly of Athenian handiwork and 

 design. A sleeping man rests on a couch. Close 

 to his head rises on its hind-paws a lion, who is 



clearly ready to slay or carry him off. On the 

 other side of the couch is a warrior who attacks 

 and repels the beast. In the background appears 

 the prow of a ship. From a Greek metrical in- 

 scription which accompanies this relief, it would 

 appear that the Phoenician stranger here buried 

 had incurred great peril at some previous period 

 of his life from the attack of a lion, who seems to 

 have surprised him resting on the shore, but who 

 was driven off by the timely arrival of friends just 

 landed from their ship. 6. A man and his wife, 

 both muffled in ample garments, advance toward 

 the spectator. Between them advances a priestess 

 of Isis, clad in the dress of her calling, holding 

 in her right hand the sistrum, in her left the ves- 

 sel of sacred water. It is possible, the inscrip- 

 tions which accompany this representation being 

 illegible, that the monument was erected to a 

 father and mother, and to their daughter devoted 

 to Isis. Or it is possible that we have here ex- 

 pressed in a symbolical form the devotion of a 

 man and woman to that mysterious worship which 

 spread in Ptolemaic times from the bank of the 

 Nile over all lands, and their firm trust that in 

 the next world Isis would recognize and protect 

 her worshipers. 



Such are a few specimens of the reliefs which 

 give us more precise information with regard to 

 the lives and habits of the dead. In the same 

 way, those who had devoted themselves to a pro- 

 fession appear on their tombs with the badges of 

 that profession ; physicians, for instance, with the 

 cupping-glass and other instruments of their daily 

 use. So the priestesses of Apollo and Aphrodite 

 appear with the symbols of their guardian dei- 

 ties. And in this matter it is clear that the Athe- 

 nians merely followed one of the most natural 

 of all instincts leading to a custom common 

 among all nations. Thus in the " Odyssey," the 

 ghost of the drowned oarsman, Elpenor, begs 

 Ulysses, when he reaches the island of J£?ea. : 



" Kaise thou a tomb upon the shore beside the hoary 



sea, 

 Memorial of my blighted life for future times to be ; 

 Make thou my tomb beside the sea, and on it fix the 



oar, 

 Which once among my comrades dear, while yet I 



lived, I bore." 



And thus, even in 'our own day, what device is 

 commoner on a soldier's grave than sword and 

 cannon, or on a painter's than palette and brush ? 

 But although the sculptors of tombs usually 

 designed references to the past life of those they 

 commemorated, such was not always the case. 

 After all, past was past, and it were idle to deny 



