Thus when we see on our reliefs a lady holding out empty hands (cf. [Pl. XXVI]), we may be sure that originally those hands had borne a necklace or other jewelry, added in colour. The handles of the marriage vase on Pl. IV must have been marked with colour. The ornaments of the helmet of Aristonautes ([Pl. XI]) were added in metal, and so on in other cases. To the modern eye the pure white of Greek reliefs as they now are, seems classical and appropriate. And we may be right. Greek life has passed away, and looks upon us as if from another world in the ghostly reflection of Greek art. We see it not in a realistic but in a softened and ideal light. But the Greeks themselves loved strong colour, and in any purely artistic question their eyes are far more to be trusted than ours, which are perverted by the ugly surroundings of our daily life.
The date of Greek sepulchral monuments may be determined by a variety of considerations. The inscriptions which they bear may help us in some cases. We know that the old Attic alphabet, which did not distinguish short from long vowels, confusing O with Ω, and E with H, and which used the form
for Λ and Λ for Γ, was officially superseded by the alphabet of Asia Minor in the archonship of Euclides 403 B.C. But long before this date the Ionian letters had been in frequent use for private documents. Thus any tomb bearing an inscription in the Ionian character can scarcely be later than 400 B.C.; but may be considerably earlier. The evidence of date furnished by inscriptions being thus rather vague, we return to the evidence offered by the forms of the stelae and the style of the reliefs.
A certain roughness and want of elaboration in the acroteria, the architectural adornments of the tops of the stelae, indicates fifth-century work. For example, the stelae of Lysander ([Pl. XX]) and of Mica ([Pl. XXI]), with their somewhat clumsy ending above, are typical of the fifth century, while a somewhat more elegant top, as in the stele of Damasistrata ([Pl. XXIII]), is usually an indication of the more luxurious fourth century. But style of sculpture is a safer criterion. Those who are familiar with the style of the Parthenon frieze, and with that of Praxitelean art, will find little difficulty in determining to which of these two very different styles that of any given relief most closely approximates. To the question of the relation of sepulchral reliefs to the works of the great Athenian artists we will return in a later chapter (XI).
The effects of the sumptuary laws of Demetrius Phalereus are clearly visible in the Athenian cemeteries. After 300 B.C. we find no more lofty stelae, no more temple-like tombs of great size and beauty. As might be expected from the statement of Cicero above cited, henceforward we find only small and mean monuments, the low stele with reliefs, the stone lekythos, the short pillar, inscribed only with a name. Such tombs are found in extraordinary abundance in the neighbourhood of Athens; but their interest, whether from the point of view of the historian or the artist, is but slight, and we shall be but little concerned with them in these pages.
We must imagine most of the roads leading to great cities as flanked on both sides by the sculptured memorials of the dead. Those who have visited Rome and Pompeii will be familiar with this custom, which seems to us rather depressing. But we must remember that the tombs of the Greeks and Romans had not that air of uniform melancholy which tombs bear among us. The frontispiece shows a part of the great Athenian cemetery of the Cerameicus, which lay just outside the Dipylon Gate. It shows us the line of tombs of various ages and of many forms, which flanked the sacred way leading to Eleusis, the line of which is visible in the foreground. On the left is the relief of Dexileos, which belonged to a sort of shrine, of which the foundations still exist. Close to it is a table or τ�άπεζα; below it, a tall stele with rosettes on the face of it, and surmounted by an acanthus. Then come more tables and a flat stele adorned with reliefs. Further are two shrines, να�σκοι, and a lofty basis supporting a bull. One or two short pillars of the later age are visible in the background. In some cases stone lekythi, such as that lying broken at the foot of the pedestal of the bull, were inserted, sometimes one and sometimes two, in the flat upper surface of the tables.
To what events this section of the cemetery owes its remarkable preservation is a matter of conjecture. Francis Lenormant suggested that it was covered by the earthen agger set up against the walls of Athens by Sulla when he attacked the city from this side, and so preserved from the ruin which time brings. Dr. Brückner, however, rejects this view, thinking that the spot was buried with earth by the Athenians themselves on some occasion[130]. Whatever explanation be accepted, it is certainly a great gain to us thus to find preserved, like a fly in amber, a section of a great cemetery of Greece.
The architectural features and decoration of the tombs of Athens may best be spoken of in this place.
First, of the acanthus. The gradual growth of this ornament in complication and variety may be traced in the stelae of successive periods[131]. The general form is always two Ionic volutes, surmounted by a palmette. To this is commonly added, after the fifth century B.C., some kind of pattern derived from the leaf of the acanthus, which Callimachus, the inventor or improver of the Corinthian column, at the same period introduced into temple architecture.