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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTELY.— SUPPLEMENT, 



acter of deity of the lower world. Therefore it 

 was assumed that the dead man was deified and 

 represented as receiving high honor from the 

 living. If, however, we allow as sepulchral only 

 the scenes whence worshipers are excluded, 

 then there remains nothing godlike or manes-like 

 in the banqueting figure ; we lose all reason for 

 supposing the scene of the banquet to be Hades. 

 Moreover, where the husband reclines there sits 

 the wife ; if this be in Hades, how is it that the 

 wife was usually surviving, in fact often erected 

 the tomb to the husband's memory ? And, in- 

 deed, nothing could be more dissonant with 

 Greek ideas than to ascribe a glorified existence 

 after death to mortals indiscriminately; at the 

 best Hades was shadowy and cold, and a banquet 

 there would be but a faint and feeble echo of 

 earthly banquets, quite untouched by any high 

 exaltation or any worship from the happier liv- 

 ing. 



The second theory is that we have in these 

 scenes, in emblematic form, pictures of those 

 feasts at the tomb which the Greeks in ancient, 

 as in modern days, spread from time to time, lest 

 the departed should suffer hunger in the next 

 world. That the dead have the same needs as 

 the living is a notion widely spread among bar- 

 barians and semi-civilized peoples. For this rea- 

 son the savage buries with the dead chief his 

 horse, perhaps his wife : for this reason many of 

 the nations of antiquity stored bread and wine in 

 the tombs with the corpse. The early Greeks 

 not only buried weapons with the dead, but even 

 whetstones to keep the edges of those weapons 

 bright ; and commonly placed in the mouth of 

 each corpse a piece of money to defray the ex- 

 penses of his journey to the next world. Thus, 

 too, on certain days the survivors held a feast at 

 the tomb of a departed friend, leaving place for 

 the dead and supposing him to partake in the 

 spirit. 



It is quite possible that this may be the true 

 account of the matter. Nevertheless, I am more 

 inclined to accept the third of the suggested ex- 

 planations, namely, that what we see before us on 

 these reliefs is neither more nor less than a daily 

 scene from the ordinary life of the dead person. 

 If the toilet be represented on the tomb, why 

 should not the family meal, that most charming 

 and most characteristic of all daily scenes ? How 

 could husband and wife be shown us in more 

 close and amiable proximity than when feasting 

 together, and feeling the same thrill of pleasure 

 from the enjoyment of earthly good ? A priori 

 we should have expected eating to be a favorite 



subject with the composers of sepulchral groups, 

 and should beware of seeking a far-off explana- 

 tion of our scenes when a nearer one will suffice. 

 It is true that there are, even in the scenes un- 

 doubtedly sepulchral, some adjuncts which seem 

 scarcely in keeping with the ordinary dinner- 

 table — the snake, for instance, in the foreground 

 and the horse in the background ; but of these 

 an explanation is possible. The snake was com- 

 monly domesticated among the Greeks, and so 

 may appear only as a domestic animal. But I 

 prefer the explanation which is ready to see in it 

 an allusion to the future death of the banqueting 

 master of the house, the snake being in many_ 

 countries, on account of its habit of living in the 

 ground, looked upon as the companion and rep- 

 resentative of the dead. In the same way the 

 horse may only convey a delicate allusion to fu- 

 ture departure on a long journey. Such slight 

 allusions would seem to suit Greek taste better 

 than more direct references. More direct refer- 

 ences, however, do sometimes appear, as in the 

 relief mentioned above as No. 4, where Charon in 

 his bark appears to summon the feasters from 

 their wine. 



There are still other ways in which, on the 

 sepulchral reliefs which, so to speak, introduce 

 us into the midst of life, a faint allusion to death, 

 a slight flavor of mortality, is introduced. We 

 often see an urn placed in a corner, such an urn 

 as when a body was burned received its ashes, or 

 such as was set up, as we learn from Demos- 

 thenes, over those who died unmarried. Like 

 the skeleton at an Egyptian feast, this urn would 

 seem meant to show that in the gayest moment 

 of life death hovers near, waiting to strike. The 

 same moral is conveyed in other cases, by the ap- 

 pearance at the side or in the foreground of a 

 snake entwined round a tree ; the snake being, as 

 I have already remarked, the companion of the 

 dead, sometimes even the embodiment of the 

 dead man's spirit or ghost. And in scenes where 

 there is no allusion to death so concrete or con- 

 ventional as the above, there is over all an aspect 

 of grief and dissatisfaction. Children or slaves 

 are weeping without apparent cause, or women 

 stand with an arm folded across their breasts, 

 their head resting on a hand, in an attitude con- 

 secrated by the Greeks to sorrow, not as among 

 us to mere reflection. 



All the scenes of which I have spoken have 

 this in common, that they represent to us the de- 

 ceased, with or without the living. But some- 

 times, though rarely, the Greeks substituted for 

 these groups a merely symbolical figure of an 



