ROMAN GARLAND SARCOPHAGI — WARD PERKINS 463 



dressing and smoothing the surfaces, but making no attempt to add 

 any fine detail. In an extreme case the sarcophagus might even be used 

 just as it was received from the quarry without any further refine- 

 ment, as in the case of the sarcophagus illustrated in plate 4, figure 

 1. The range of possibilities was very wide, and we can rarely do 

 more than guess at the reasons that lie behind the idiosyncrasies of 

 a particular piece — economy, the shortage of competent local crafts- 

 men, a sudden emergency, the taste of an individual sculptor or 

 client. But such individual traits are no more than variations on 

 a basic theme, a theme that was determined in broad outline by the 

 form in which the sarcophagus was shipped from the quarry. 



How did this form first come to be adopted ? This is one of the as 

 yet unresolved problems connected with this series of sarcophagi, and 

 we must be content to state such facts as do seem to be reasonably 

 established. The close similarities that exist between the more elab- 

 orate of the finished pieces, wherever they are found, make it clear 

 that the designs carved on them all derive from a single source, 

 either an actual individual sarcophagus or else a small group of 

 very closely related pieces. The Smithsonian sarcophagus, with its 

 wide repertory of figures (Victories, Cupids, bulls' heads, rams' 

 heads) and secondary motifs (Medusa heads, rosettes, bunches of 

 grapes) contains nearly all the motifs that can be attributed to the 

 archetype, and, allowing for certain differences of detailed treatment, 

 it may well give a very good idea of its general appearance. How 

 or why this particular iconographic scheme came to be adopted in 

 the first place is another matter. The individual motifs are all such as 

 would have been available to a sculptor working in northwestern 

 Asia Minor in the early years of the second century, and we may guess 

 that garland sarcophagi of this sort were first produced for local use. 

 If so, they were not long in reaching a wider market. The earliest 

 well-dated example is that of Caius Julius Celsus Polemaeanus, whose 

 tomb chamber beneath the library at Ephesus was completed some- 

 where about A. D. 135 ; and it cannot have been very long after this 

 that the first sarcophagi of this sort were reaching Syria and Egypt 

 and the cities of Pamphylia and Cilicia, in southern Asia Minor. 

 These first examples must have been accompanied by craftsmen who 

 set up workshops in certain favored centers, such as Alexandria, and 

 who there established the pattern of the finished design in local 

 usage. The practice of carving a simplified version of the garland 

 design before shipment was probably adopted with an eye to those 

 markets that were dependent on relatively unskilled local workshops 

 (the saving in weight can hardly have been a sufficient reason in itself) ; 

 and the form of it may well have been suggested in the first place by 



