Secondly, who and what is the lady who on the reliefs pours wine? Her stature, which is equal to that of the hero himself, and far greater than that of the worshippers, shows at once that she is no living mortal or descendant, but a person of equal rank with the horseman. As a matter of artistic tradition we can trace her genesis quite clearly, as has been well shown by Furtwängler[98]. On the Spartan stelae we found ancestor and ancestress seated side by side. When the reclining position supersedes that of sitting, the wife necessarily moves from her husband’s side and sits opposite to him. It is a variety of the same motive when the husband sits or stands and the wife pours him wine, a group found on several stelae[99], one as early as the Persian wars, and very commonly in the paintings of Greek vases, from quite an early period. The motive of wine-pouring being thus thoroughly established in Greek art, could easily be transferred from one kind of group to another. It may have been that in some cases the hero had no wife, or he may have had several successively: that would make no great difference, as the idea of the group is fixed. As Furtwängler expresses it: ‘Il importe d’insister sur le fait que nous sommes ici en face d’une forme artistique, qui avait pour objet d’exprimer une conception de ces puissances souterraines dérivée d’un des principaux usages de leur culte.’ This is a far more reasonable explanation than that of some writers, who fancy that the wine-pouring lady is a kind of Houri, or nymph of Paradise, who awaits the hero in the next world to recompense him with her embraces for the pains which he has in this world undergone for the good of mankind.
Thirdly, what is the relation between these heroic reliefs and the numerous reliefs and paintings on Attic stelae in which the deceased is represented as riding on a horse? Several of these we cite below in Chapter IX. Some points of difference between the two classes of monuments are obvious. The heroic reliefs are broad, shaped like votive tablets: the Attic reliefs are tombstones of upright shape. In the votive reliefs the wine-pouring consort is seldom absent, and votaries are usually present. In the Attic reliefs the horse is merely one of the adjuncts of daily life, and the rider is represented in the guise of his ordinary existence. In fact, as we shall see when we reach the ordinary Attic reliefs, the figure of the horseman, when it occurs on them, is merely a characteristic portrait of a man who in his life had been fond of horses, and perhaps won victories with them at the great sacred festivals.
Nevertheless, it would be very rash to say that the heroic and the ordinary horseman reliefs had no influence on one another. For example, a relief at Tanagra[100] seems to fall exactly between the two classes. On it a horseman in armour rides, followed by an attendant who holds the tail of the horse, as was the way of Greek body-servants. A female figure meets the pair with wine-jug and cup. Here, if the relief belongs to the one class, the servant is out of place; if to the other class, the pourer of wine. Probably, being oblong in form, it is really of the heroic class, but contaminated by the influence of the other. On an ordinary sepulchral slab in the British Museum[101], the horseman and servant recur, but the lady is absent.
In recent years an immense quantity of votive terra-cottas has been discovered on the site of the Dorian colony of Tarentum. These illustrate in a striking fashion the monuments of the Spartan mother-city. They consist mainly of two groups.
In the first group we see a man, bearded or beardless, wearing a tall crown, reclining on a couch, often holding a wine-cup. Beside him is seated a woman, sometimes bearing in her arms a child, who stretches out his arms towards the man. We engrave ([Fig. 37]) a specimen of the class[102], in which, however, the child does not appear, but instead, in the background, a horse, who seems to be drinking from the flat cup. And this horse connects the first group with the second, which consists of figures of riding horsemen.
FIG. 37. VOTIVE TABLET, TARENTUM.
Mr. Arthur Evans, who has had the advantage of studying these terracottas at Tarentum[103], is disposed to maintain that the group represents, not deceased persons, but rather the deities of the lower world, Dionysus, Cora, and Iacchus. ‘The terracotta representations here found must be rather regarded as primarily connected with the cult of chthonic deities and national heroes, than with that of departed human spirits,’ though ‘the starting-point may be regarded as purely sepulchral.’ Dr. Wolters, on the other hand[104], connects the representations far more closely with the worship of the dead. But after all, the opposition between these two opinions is not fundamental. Probably at Tarentum, as at Sparta, the dead ancestor and ancestress were regarded as scarcely distinguishable from the king and queen of the world of shades, into whose being they passed at death. Thus the last note struck in the monuments of Dorian hero-worship is in complete harmony with the first.
FIG. 38. HERO ON FOOT.