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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



that the moment of death brought a vast change 

 over everything. The next class of reliefs have 

 reference to the fact and the moment of death. 

 Among the Romans that fact was symbolized in 

 art frequently by sleep ; and among all Christian 

 nations it has become usual to speak of death in 

 metaphorical language borrowed from the rest of 

 night. But it was not usually merely as a deeper 

 sleep that death presented itself to the imagi- 

 nation of Athenian sculptors. They considered 

 death rather as a departure, a going far away from 

 and losing sight of one's family and friends. 

 Scenes of leave-taking are among the most fre- 

 quent of all sepulchral reliefs. I am not, how- 

 ever, sure that this leave-taking is quite con- 

 sciously adopted as the image of death. Indeed, 

 all images of death were somewhat distasteful to 

 the joyous sensuousness of Athenian taste. But 

 when an artist had to represent the dead and the 

 surviving friends of the dead in a group, this post- 

 ure of farewell, which must have been one of 

 the most usual and natural to think of, seems to 

 have frequently suggested itself, and, in virtue 

 of its inherent appropriateness to the occasion, 

 to have become more and more common. This 

 leave-taking presents itself in the least intrusive 

 and gentlest form in those representations where 

 a lady appears dressing herself with the assist- 

 ance of her maids for an out-door journey, throw- 

 ing over her head the ample veil, and perhaps 

 handing to an attendant nurse the babe whom she 

 cannot take out into the open air with her. Some- 

 times the preparations are more advanced; the 

 lady sits or stands veiled and prepared for a jour- 

 ney, and gives her hand to husband or father 

 who stands opposite. Sometimes two men grasp 

 hands as if about to travel in different directions. 

 Occasionally a horse appears in the background, 

 or the head of a horse is seen through a window, 

 which is destined to carry away the master of the 

 house. In this very introduction of the horse 

 we see how much the notion of travel preponder- 

 ates in those scenes over that of death. For the 

 horse was in no way connected by the Greeks 

 with death. The rider on the pale horse had yet 

 to be introduced to the popular imagination by 

 the writer of the Apocalypse, who must have 

 borrowed from a non-Hellenic source. Dwelling 

 closely hemmed in by the sea, they never thought 

 of the dead as traveling to other worlds by land, 

 but usually as going over the waves mysterious 

 and vast to some distant island, or perhaps as 

 penetrating into deep abysses of the land. But, 

 for journeys from town to town in Hellas, the 

 horse was the appropriate conveyer, from which 



fact he becomes the symbol of all moving and 

 journeying. 



The old opinion of archaeologists with regard 

 to these scenes of farewell, an opinion grounded 

 on insufficient induction, was that in them the 

 dead were represented as seated, the survivors 

 as standing and taking leave of them. It is now 

 acknowledged that this is not the case. It is true 

 that most commonly in the groups one is seated, 

 while of the standing figures one grasps his or her 

 hand. But a careful study of the accompanying 

 inscriptions proves that it is sometimes the dead 

 person who stands while the survivor sits ; and, 

 again, in other cases both the dead and the living 

 stand, while sometimes, again, of the several dead 

 persons commemorated some stand and some are 

 seated. The fact is that any pedantic rule of uni- 

 formity is put out of the question by the circum- 

 stances under which sepulchral reliefs were de- 

 signed and executed. It was essential to the 

 composition of a group, thought the artists, that 

 some of the figures should stand and others sit ; 

 but the question which should do each was set- 

 tled, not by a desire to convey a careful meaning 

 to the eyes of beholders, but by the study of a 

 little graceful variety, within somewhat narrow 

 limits, and the influence of every-day custom 

 which made it far more natural and usual that a 

 woman should be seated when taking leave of a 

 man, than a man when taking leave of a woman. 

 Sometimes a little life breaks in on the cold for- 

 mality of the group. Children cling about their 

 mother's knee, or daughters stand by in an atti- 

 tude betokening their grief; but those circum- 

 stances which might move emotion in the specta- 

 tor are quite banished or kept sedulously in the 

 background. Here, as ever, the Greek abode by 

 that motto, "Nothing in extremes," which ex- 

 presses the ultimate law of all his art. 



Another set of representations introduce us to 

 a scene of banqueting. 1 1. A man reclines on a 

 couch in the posture adopted by the Greeks at 

 their meals — before him a three-legged table. 

 Near his head sits a woman on a chair, holding in 

 her hand the end of her veil. 2. Similar two fig- 

 ures appear to those in the last relief, but in ad- 

 dition there is in the foreground a slave pouring 

 wine from a larger into a smaller vessel. 3. A 

 man reclining at table holds a cup in his right 

 hand ; near him sits his wife, behind whom is a 

 slave pouring wine from an amphora. Behind the 



1 M. Albert Dumont has published a volume on this 

 class of monuments. The work has been crowned by 

 the French Institute, but I have been unable to find a 

 copy in English libraries. 



