A youth, standing, clad in a chlamys; he holds a staff in one hand, in the other a cake or fruit; before him a snake erect.
Both of these are of quite early style: with the latter of them we may compare the following in the Museum at Athens[82]:—
FIG. 31. STELE, MAN FEEDING SNAKE.
Man standing wrapped in a mantle; in his left hand a pomegranate, in the right a winecup, out of which feeds a serpent coiled and erect.
In these instances we approach the ordinary representation of the dead as standing, so common on the tombs alike of Athens and of Northern Greece, numerous instances of which will be found in the ninth chapter. Yet the snake, the flower, the pomegranate, all belong to the special cultus of the dead; and there is not in these cases a reference to the past life, as is probably the case with the great majority of Attic stelae.
CHAPTER VII
HEROIZING RELIEFS
Before we proceed further, one distinction of importance has to be made. It will be found that all the sepulchral monuments of Greece belong to one of two classes:—
1. Actual tombs, whether temples, or tables, or slabs hewn to be let into the ground.
2. Commemorative tablets. These may readily be distinguished in form, because their width is greater than their height, whereas in the true grave-stele, the height is greater than the width. They were made usually not to be fixed into the ground of the cemetery, but to be set up in chapels or mounted on walls in its neighbourhood. An example will be found in [Pl. III]. These slabs have a closer relation to actual cultus than have the gravestones. Their likeness in shape and in composition to tablets dedicated to the deities is obvious. In fact they belonged to the chapels and shrines sacred to the worship of heroes and exalted ancestors, rather than to the ordinary dead.