FIG. 45. TERRA-COTTA: SPHINX AND YOUTH.
borrowed forms and gave to them their own meaning. They took the forms and sounds of the letters of the alphabet from the Phoenicians, but used those letters to express their own thoughts, and the same thing took place when they received from the East an established pattern or form in art. To the Greeks, then, the sphinx is a monster, sometimes fierce and hostile, sometimes more kindly and gentle, who brings men and women to an early death; a spiritual force, like the Siren, which bears away souls. On a terra-cotta ([Fig. 45]) published by Stackelberg[139], a sphinx, this time with human arms, is represented as standing on the body of a dead youth. Some such group must have been before the mind of Aeschylus when he describes the shield of Parthenopaeus as adorned with a sphinx bearing in her claws a man of Thebes[140]. But in the sphinx of our engraving there is no sign of fierceness or ravening.
FIG. 46. STELE OF LAMPTRAE, RESTORED.
A sphinx probably stood on the top of one of the most interesting of early Athenian monuments, the stele of Lamptrae, of which I give a restoration ([Fig. 46]) by Dr. Winter[141]. It consisted of a thick slab with elegantly adorned cornice. On the top is a deep cutting, made to hold either the sphinx of the engraving, or, possibly, a portrait. Three sides of the slab bear low reliefs which are much injured, but the subjects of which are of interest. On the front is a young horseman, evidently the denizen of the tomb, who rides to the right on a horse, holding spear and shield: a second horse is represented by a mere doubling of the outlines. On one of the narrower sides stands the father of the horseman, in an attitude of grief: on the other side are two mourning women, no doubt his near relatives. To these mourning relatives we may find abundant parallels among the vases which represent the lying in state of the corpse and its removal to the place of burial[142].
It will be observed that the sphinx of the terra-cotta has human arms. This, and her female sex, bring her into close connexion with other female monsters, who also are winged and have the arms of women, the Harpies and the Sirens. Harpy and Siren are, in fact, not clearly distinguished in art; both are human-headed birds. And both are daemons destructive to human life, since, according to the legends, the Harpies were notable for foul and ravenous habits, the Sirens for a passion for the blood of the sailors whom they drew to them by the sweetness of their singing. As sphinx and Siren were thus both alike the ministers of early or untimely death, it will not greatly surprise us to find that on later monuments Sirens appear in the place of sphinxes. An instance from the museum at Athens is figured ([Fig. 47])[143]; the woman-bird is human from head to waist, and is occupied with playing on her lyre. The tomb on which she stood perhaps belonged to some young girl or boy who perished by an untimely death.
Yet this is by no means certain. For the Siren of Attic tombs has greatly modified her nature under the kindly influence of Attic poetry and art. She came from the East, almost certainly as a malicious and devouring daemon. But in the ordinary custom of Attic tombs of the fifth and fourth centuries she becomes friendly and sympathetic. Sometimes, as in our example, she plays on a musical instrument. Sometimes she seems to express grief by the movements of her arms, beating her breast, or tearing her hair (see Pl. IV). A passage in the Helena[144] of Euripides represents the Sirens quite in the same sympathetic light. Helen, when wailing over the calamities at Troy calls on the Sirens, winged maidens, daughters of the earth, to come and join to her lamentations the music in which they were skilled.
FIG. 47. SIREN, FROM TOMB.