THE GREEK MIND IN PRESENCE OF DEATH. 



273 



Here there is no knight in harness on his knees 

 awaiting a joyful resurrection. The artist has 

 with more or less skill presented to us only the 

 persons themselves, and so made their existence 

 lasting and perpetual. They fold not their hands, 

 gaze not into heaven ; they are on earth, what they 

 were, and what they are. They stand side by side, 

 take interest in one another, love one another; 

 and that is what is in the stone, even though some- 

 what unskillfully, yet most pleasingly depicted." » 



It is a proof at once of the genius of Goethe, 

 and of his keen sympathy with all that is truly 

 Greek, that, at a time before Greek art was half 

 understood, he was able to judge from the few 

 inferior specimens known to him of the general 

 character of these sepulchral reliefs. That on 

 which he lays his master-hand is certainly their 

 most essential character. Their whole aspect is 

 turned, so to speak, from the future to the past, 

 and from heaven to earth. We whose ancestors 

 have been, for some twelve hundred years, taught 

 constantly that death is but the entrance to wider 

 life, that the world is a place of probation and 

 preparation for eternity, can scarcely place our- 

 selves in thought in the position of men who 

 seemed to have found the world charming and 

 delightful, and to have been well satisfied with it, 

 preferring to let their minds dwell on the enjoy- 

 ments of the past, rather than on a future which 

 at best was a cold and gloomy echo of the pres- 

 ent world. It is not that they disbelieved in the 

 unseen world, or thought that the soul died with 

 the body ; such skepticism was perhaps rarer in 

 antiquity than in modern times, and confined in 

 antiquity as in modern times to a few of the 

 highly-educated. But that inevitable future oc- 

 cupied comparatively very little of their time and 

 thought ; it was a cold shadow to be kept out 

 of sunny life as much as might be. And when 

 it was thought of, it was thought of without 

 very much either of hope or fear. Terrible pun- 

 ishments in it were reserved for terrible crimi- 

 nals, supreme pleasures for the supremely good, 

 but for ordinary mortals an ordinary fate was 

 reserved, a sort of ghost or echo of their mor- 

 tal life, made up, like that, of pleasure and pain, 

 but with both pleasure and pain diluted and 

 made ghostly. From discontent with life and 

 repining at the lot assigned by Fate, the Greeks 

 would seem to have been singularly free, and 

 no nation ever thought life better worth living. 

 I shall have more to say on this subject further on. 



It remains to speak of the inscriptions which 



1 "Italieniscbe Reise," a propos of the museum 

 et Verona. 



54 



accompany, or even take the place of, the re- 

 liefs, and which have sometimes a considerable 

 interest for us. It will be convenient to quote 

 these inscriptions in English ; those who wish to 

 compare the original Greek can easily do so in 

 the complete work of Kumanudes. 1 



There are in the British Museum two sepul- 

 chral inscriptions on public tombs 2 of consider- 

 able interest. Of these one contains lists of all 

 the citizens who fell in a single year at the va- 

 rious places where Athens was carrying on war. 

 We learn from Thucydides and Pausanias that 

 it was the Athenian custom thus annually to 

 honor with a public monument all those who had 

 in the previous year fallen in the battles of their 

 country — a custom which must have nerved for 

 death many a soldier's heart, as he reflected that 

 he was sure, if he fell, of a sort of immortality 

 before the eyes and in the memory of his coun- 

 trymen. The other inscription, which was writ- 

 ten under a relief representing three warriors, 

 commemorates those Athenians who fell before 

 Potidaea, in the year b. c. 432. It runs thus: 



" Thus to the dead is deathless honor paid, 

 Who, fired with valor hot, in arms arrayed, 

 Felt each our fathers 1 valor in him glow, 

 And won long fame and victory o'er the foe. 



" Heaven claimed their spirits, earth their bodies 



took, 

 The foemen's gate their conquering onslaught 



shook ; 

 Of those they routed some in earth abide, 

 Some in strong walls their lives in terror hide. 



" Erechtheus' city mourns her children's fall, 

 Who fought and died by Potideea's wall, 

 True sons of Athens, for a virtuous name 

 They changed their lives, and swelled their conn- 

 try's fame." 



The smallness of the number of public epi- 

 taphs at Athens is well compensated by the abun- 

 dance of private ones, of which upward of 4,000 

 have been already published, while every year 

 brings a multitude of fresh ones to light. I will 

 attempt to class these, as I did the reliefs. The 

 commonest inscriptions by far are those which 

 simply record, in the case of a man, his name, 

 his father's name, and his deme or clan ; in the 

 case of a woman, her name, that of her father, 

 husband, or husband and father, with their re- 

 spective demes. Of the numerous epitaphs which 

 remain, perhaps nine out of ten are of this sim- 

 ple character. Probably in most cases they are 



1 'Attiktjj 'Eiriypa<f>al 'Ettitv/xjSioi. Athens, 1871. 



4 " Corpus of British Musenm Inscriptions," i., pp. 

 102-107. The reading of the first few lines is very 

 doubtful. I follow Messrs. Newton and Hicks. 



