Alxenor was a native of Naxos, Aristocles probably of a Parian family; these are facts, among others, which confirm the view put forth by Loeschcke and Furtwängler, that the stele with portrait is of Ionian origin, and imported into Greece together with the marble of the islands of the Asiatic coast, and with the sculptors who came to exercise their hereditary skill in carving that marble. It is difficult to prove to demonstration any assertion in regard to the art of Ionia, as the remains which will finally establish or condemn such assertions still lie beneath the soil of Miletus, Ephesus, Phocaea, and the other great Ionian settlements of the coast. But we can assert with reasonable confidence, that as Greece owed conservatism and ancestor-worship to the rigid Dorians, so she owed progress in art and all the delights of life to the joyous Ionian strain; and portraiture has in it the human and individual character which belongs especially to the Ionians.
FIG. 53. SEATED HERO.
Another relief, now preserved at Ince Blundell Hall[168] ([Fig. 53]), sets before us a typical Greek citizen, seated in dignified fashion. From the artistic point of view it is interesting to see how completely, even in the archaic period, the sculptor has attained the art of displaying rather than concealing the bodily forms by means of the drapery. Whence this relief may have come we know not. But it is of Parian marble, and the comparison of other reliefs indicates for it an Ionian origin, perhaps on one of the islands of the Aegean. We miss the attributes which in the stelae of Sparta refer to the cultus of ancestors. It is, however, impossible to be sure that they were originally wanting. For it seems clear that on the right hand, which lies palm upwards, some attribute rested which was indicated in colour, perhaps a flat cup, while the raised left hand may have held a flower.
FIG. 54. HEAD OF YOUTH HOLDING DISCUS.
The stelae of youths are in the early age more common than those of grown men. As we might expect, the portraits of young men, even from their tombs, are marked by an athletic tinge. In the wall of Themistocles, already mentioned, near the Dipylon gate of Athens, was found the head of a young man, who had probably been a winner in the pentathlon, a combination of five contests—hurling the spear, throwing the discus, leaping, running, and wrestling[169]. The victors in this complicated sport appear in their statues holding either spear or discus or the weights (άλτῆÏ�ες) used in leaping. In the present case it is the discus which has the preference ([Fig. 54]). Held up in the left hand, the discus forms a sort of background or frame to the remarkable head, with its long arched nose, its wide-open archaic eye, and the long mass of its hair falling down the neck.
FIG. 55. DERMYS AND CITYLUS.
To this work, which is, for the time, of finished style and execution, a strong contrast is presented by an extraordinary monument of Boeotia ([Fig. 55]), from the tomb of two brothers,