Sculptured tombs of Hellas

by Percy Gardner

Let us pass to the other three sides of the tomb. The central group of each of them represents a seated male figure receiving offerings from a votary, also male. But the motive of the groups and the age of the votaries varies. On the east, a young boy brings an egg and a cock to an elderly man who holds a flower and a sceptre: a Triton supports the arm of his chair. On the south, a youth carries a dove to a clumsy figure who holds fruits. On the north, a warrior brings armour to a bearded personage, beneath whose throne is a bear. The flanking figures on the east side are merely more votaries with offerings. But on the north and south sides we find the remarkable beings from whom the tomb takes its name, strange monsters having the head, arms, and breasts of women, but the tails and feet of birds, who carry each in her arms a young girl clad in long drapery. In the corner of the north side is a woman, who sits in an attitude of grief.

FIG. 27. NORTH AND WEST SIDES OF HARPY TOMB.

Such are the details of reliefs, the precise import of which will probably never be recovered, unless a new light dawns on Lycian customs and religion. Earlier explanations saw in the winged figures the Harpies or storm-winds bearing away the daughters of Pandareus, according to a well-known tale of the Odyssey[71]. But an objection to this interpretation at once arises from the fact that the girls who are being borne away cling lovingly to their captors, and show neither dread nor anger. Hence it has appeared more reasonable to find in them souls of women gently carried by guardian spirits to the land of the future. In the seated male and female figures, it has been proposed to find the deities of the Lycian race, though who these were is not clear. If the seated ladies be goddesses, it seems clear that they must preside respectively over life and death. Yet it would be very bold so far to Hellenize them as to call them Demeter, the impersonation of the fruitful earth, and Persephone, queen of the shades below.

The most recent explanation of the reliefs, first propounded by Milchhoefer, regards them as memorials of the worship, not of the gods, but of the heroized dead. Certainly they in some points nearly resemble the Spartan reliefs, of which we shall treat in the next chapter, and which do beyond doubt belong to the hero-worship of Lacedaemonian families. The offerings, too, in the hands of the votaries, the flower, the fruit, the egg, and the cock, are such as were brought in Greece to the tomb, and such as are figured in the Spartan monuments. No offering could be more appropriately offered to a deceased ancestor, in an artistic representation, than the armour which was sometimes in early days placed, in Greek and Asiatic graves, on the head and the breast of him who had worn it during his life; and in later days was sometimes attached to his tomb. And however we interpret the winged figures, we can hardly make them other than the ministers of death, a fact which seems to strike a keynote with which all the rest of the explanation must harmonize.

Yet when we try to explain the sculptures as memorials of Lycian ancestor-worship we soon come to difficulties. On the stelae of Sparta we find a pair, ancestor and ancestress, or the ancestor alone. On Attic tombs we do not find more than a family group. But here, on the monument of Xanthus, there are five detached seated figures, three men and two women. What kind of a group of ancestors will these form, and why are they separate? In the little seated lady of the north side one is tempted, on the analogy of mediaeval paintings, to see the dedicator of the whole tomb. But this again is uncertain. In the whole matter we walk like the Mystae at Eleusis in the dark, seeing only vague forms and hearing words which we cannot interpret.

To the winged figures with their prey we may certainly find an analogy in the Sirens of the Athenian monuments (see below, Chap. VIII). The Siren was with the Greeks a sepulchral figure, and signified a death gentle rather than violent. The small beings in their arms on the Xanthian monument are almost certainly souls, which Greek art often represents as of very small size.

The Siren, in her ordinary Greek form, is found on another Lycian monument, which has not hitherto been engraved. In the British Museum[72] only the gable end of this tomb is preserved. In the midst of it is a column of Ionic type, though not of the ordinary form, on which stands the Siren of whom we speak. She is clad in a short chiton, girt at the waist, with loose sleeves. Though the wings and legs are those of a bird, she has human arms, outstretched. On either side of the column sits a figure: on the left a beardless elderly man, on the right a bearded man; each holds a staff, and extends the unoccupied hand. These two dignified men appear to be the heroes to whom the tomb belongs; and the Siren represents the mourning of the survivors. Here, even more than in the Harpy Tomb, we seem within the range of Greek conceptions and Ionic art.

FIG. 28. GABLE OF LYCIAN TOMB.