The foregoing are the main types of the early Attic reliefs. The British Museum does not contain any specimens of the early period, but the study of the early reliefs enables us to classify the later works, and to distinguish the indigenous Attic types from those that are imported, or of later development.
Decorative Stelae.—The stelae crowned with the palmette and acanthus acroteria are described below, Nos. 599-618. They are principally derived from Athens, but several specimens (Nos. 611-618) roughly worked in coarse limestone are a part of the collection of sculptures from Kertch. One of the best examples of Attic work of this class in the British Museum, will be found in the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities, namely the stelè of Artemidoros with a bilingual Greek and Phoenician inscription. (Dodwell, Tour i., p. 411; Greek Inscriptions in Brit. Mus., cix.)
Scenes from Daily Life and figures of Animals.—The monuments with portraits and scenes from daily life are catalogued below, Nos. 619-679. The incidents chosen are taken from all parts of life, and in late times are apt to be of a genre character with scenes from children's games, &c.
Reliefs with figures of horsemen, where the scene appears only to be an incident from daily life, and not connected with the heroification of the deceased, have also been placed here (Nos. 638, 661-666).
Examples of the figure of an animal placed on the tomb, of a symbolic or decorative character, are best seen among the archaic sculptures (compare those from Xanthos), but the bull, No. 680, is a specimen of a figure from an Attic stelè.
The types which have been described so far, are simple records of the deceased person. We turn now to various classes, which are not represented among the Attic remains of the archaic period, and which are more or less of religious or ritualist significance.
Vases.—The Sepulchral Vases, which are represented either in relief or in the round, are a common form of monument at Athens, and are connected with the observances paid to the dead. These vases which are sometimes lekythi, and sometimes amphorae or hydriae, may be decorated with patterns, or with subjects in relief, such as appear on other sepulchral stelae. They probably are to be traced from the vessels of pottery in which offerings were brought, to be poured out as libations on the tomb. Compare below the account of the "Sepulchral Banquet."
There is ancient authority for the view that the vase indicates an unmarried person. Eustath. on Il. XXIII., 141, p. 1293: καὶ τοῖς πρὸ γάμου δὲ τελευτῶσιν ἡ λουτροφόρος, φασίν, ἐπετίθετο κάλπις εἰς ἔνδειξιν τοῦ ὅτι ἄλουτος τὰ νυμφικὰ καὶ ἄγονος ἄπεισι. Demosthenes (in Leochar. pp. 1086 and 1089, ed. Reiske) speaks also of ἡ λουτροφόρος (sc. ὑδρία or κάλπις), being placed on the tomb of an unmarried person. (Kumanudis, p. 18; Greek Inscriptions in Brit. Mus., No. lxxx.)
On the other hand, the tombs of a father, Philoxenos, and of his sons Parthenios and Dion, in the Cerameicos at Athens were all surmounted by stone vases (C. I. A., ii., 3191-3193; Conze, p. 16). Perhaps a distinction must be made between the lekythi which represent libations at the tomb, and the hydriae, which have the special meaning mentioned above. An early instance of the Attic sepulchral vase, with painting and relief, is placed by Köhler on epigraphic grounds between 450 and 430 b.c. (Athenische Mittheilungen, x., pl. 13, p. 362.)
Figures clasping Hands.—In Attic reliefs, chiefly of the fourth and subsequent centuries, the two principal persons are often represented clasping right hands together, and such scenes are commonly known as Scenes of Parting. A more correct interpretation may be gathered from a fragment of an archaic sepulchral relief from Aegina (Athenische Mittheilungen, viii., pl. 17), in which a female figure, enthroned and holding a pomegranate (compare the Spartan reliefs mentioned below), clasps the hand of a standing figure, which is shown by the scale to be that of another deceased person. In this case the scene is laid in Hades, and the clasping of the hands is significant of affection, not of separation. Hence it has been thought that all subjects with the clasped hands represent the meeting and union in Hades after death (Furtwaengler, Coll. Sabouroff, i., p. 46). There is, however, no proof that the artist was always consciously placing the scene in Hades, and in No. 710 Hermes seems about to conduct the deceased person to the nether world. The presence of figures in attitudes of grief, of children and servants, seems to show that these reliefs are symbolic of family affection, though the artist had no very clear and logical conception of the moment depicted.