In the same volume of the Athenian Mittheilungen (ii), in which this relief was originally published, may be found photographs of other reliefs which closely resemble it in character, but show small differences in period and detail. On Plate 24 is a relief wherein the snake is wholly wanting: on Plate 23 the snake is transposed, being erect in front of the wine-cup, and the style of the work is decidedly more advanced: on Plate 22 a dog appears beside the seated pair.
These four reliefs then make up a strongly defined group; and before we turn to other reliefs of the Spartan class, it may be well to determine what meaning may be assigned to the representations which they exhibit.
We may begin by rejecting without hesitation some of the theories on the subject which might naturally be suggested by a first impression. The wine-cup in the hands of the male figure might dispose one to think of Dionysus and his consort Ariadne; but this explanation would leave the serpent and other features unexplained, nor have we reason to think that the cultus of Dionysus had struck deep roots at Sparta in early times. Again, the serpent might suggest Asklepius with his daughter Hygieia, since the healing deity commonly carries a staff round which a serpent twines. But to this explanation the winecup offers difficulties; and, again, the evidence for a local cult at Sparta is insufficient.
Far nearer to the mark is the view which Dr. Milchhoefer accepted, that in the dignified seated pair we have embodied the deities of the world of shades. The wine-cup would in that case refer to the frequent offerings of wine made to the shades below; and the serpent is the well-known companion and friend of the dead. We are not well informed as to the names borne at Sparta by the king and queen of the world of the dead. At Argos they were not so well known by the Homeric names of Hades and Persephone, which they commonly bore in Greece, as by the names of Klymenos and Chthonia. But in fact the pair were known by many names in various places.
An interesting terra-cotta ([Fig. 29]) from Locri in Italy[75] presents a group at first sight nearly resembling the seated pair of Sparta. We find on it Hades and his Queen seated side by side: he is wreathed and holds flowers; she carries a cock and ears of corn. This is valuable evidence, and shows that in southern Italy monuments of the class we are considering might well belong to the worship of the recognized deities of the nether world. But a closer consideration shows that at Sparta the worship took another and a less generalized form, natural to a race among whom ancestors were held in special and unusual honour.
Though Hades and his Queen are frequently mentioned in sepulchral inscriptions, they are but rarely figured together in sculpture. A comparison of two or three other stelae of Sparta will suggest at all events a modification of the view that the seated pair of the reliefs already mentioned are merely the rulers of the world below. In the fourth volume of the Athenian Mittheilungen are published two reliefs which beat
FIG. 29. HADES AND PERSEPHONE.
important inscriptions. On one is represented a man wrapped in a cloak seated: in his left hand is a pomegranate; in his right a wine-cup, out of which a coiled serpent drinks. The stone bears the name ΤΙΜΟΚΛΗϹ. If this inscription were of the same date as the relief it would of course at once prove that the stone is a memorial of an individual, and not a dedication to Hades. But in the opinion at least of Prof. Furtwängler the inscription is decidedly the later; it cannot therefore be regarded as conclusive evidence. But such evidence is afforded us by the next monument. Here we have a bearded man seated, in a decidedly later and more finished style of art, holding in his right hand a wine-cup, from which a serpent feeds. The inscription here is ΑΡΙΣΤΟΚΛΗϹ Ο ΚΑΙ ΖΗΘΟϹ; and it seems not merely to show that the memorial belongs to a man, Aristocles, but also that this Aristocles received a second name after his death in the quality of hero or demi-god. We learn from other sources of several such heroic names bestowed on distinguished men after their death. The rarity of names on the Spartan tombs may be readily accounted for by the existence of a stern law of Lycurgus[76], that names were not to be recorded on the tombs except in the case of priestesses, or of warriors who had fallen in battle. Another regulation of the great lawgiver ordained that bodies might be buried within the city, and memorials of the dead set up in the neighbourhood of the temples. Such monuments were not always gravestones, but sometimes memorials of those who were buried in a different place, or had fallen on foreign service.
In view of such facts as these we cannot hesitate to see in the sepulchral reliefs of Sparta reference to individuals, the ancestor, or the ancestor and his wife. They are the shrines of the family worship of the Laconians. But yet in a sense the dead man is identical with Hades. In Egypt each of the virtuous dead became part of Osiris. According to Herodotus the Getae thought that their dead returned to their deity Zalmoxis. In Greece, by dying, men put away the individual accidents of the flesh and became in a sense united with Hades. This no doubt is one reason why down to the second century B.C. we scarcely ever find individual portraits on tombs, a fact to which we shall hereafter return.