ATHENS. 283 
proved, upon a former occasion 8 , that Pallas, or 
the whole body of female Divinities whom this 
Goddess was supposed to personify, or Night, 
or Silence, or Death, or any other sign of priva- 
tion, was but a type of the passive principle : con- 
sequently, the void amphora, or the Gorgonian 
head (which Pallas bore upon her <egis, and 
which also often appears with the amphora upon 
the medals of Athens), or the owl, or the mytho- 
logical principle denoted by any one of these, 
was an allusion to the sleep of Nature, and must 
have been considered as the memento mori of the 
Pagan world. For a decisive proof of this, it 
may be urged, that the form of the amphora 
itself was sometimes given to the Stele, as a 
sepulchral monument 3 . A tomb was opened in 
the South of Russia, containing on either side of 
it a void amphora leaning against the Soros*. 
Sometimes the Antients represented a ivinged 
Sphinx as sitting upon an empty amphora*; and 
(2) See " Greek Marbles," p. 30. also Append, p. 72. 
(3) A marble amphora of this description is in the Collection of 
Greek Marbles at Cambridge : it was found upon the shore of the 
Propontis ; and presented by Spencer Smith, Esq. late Minister Pleni- 
potentiary at the Ottoman Porte, brother of Sir Sidney Smith. 
(4) The place is called Ovidiopol by the Russians. There is an 
engraved representation of the interior of the tomb in Pallas's Travels 
through the South of Russia, vol. II. p. 244. 
(5) Voy. Rechercb.es sur 1'Origin des Arts, &c. 
