young girls holding dolls. The specimen engraved ([Fig. 63]) is from the tomb of one Aristomache[186]. Aristomache is about thirteen or fourteen years old; the undeveloped breast shows her not to have attained full womanhood. Her head, gently bent, is turned towards a little figure, no doubt intended for a terra-cotta statuette, which she holds in her right hand. This statuette might perhaps represent a deity; but the comparison of other reliefs[187], where a doll is certainly represented, makes us disposed to see one here also. Greek girls were allowed dolls until they married, when they often dedicated them, with balls and other girlish toys, to some female deity[188]. The presence of the doll, then, shows that Aristomache has not yet taken a husband and laid aside infants of terra-cotta for those of flesh.

Finally, we engrave ([Fig. 64]) a characteristic figure of a priestess of Isis[189], from a tomb on which she appears, probably in company of her parents, but they have been broken away. In the stiff and formal dress of her calling she advances, bearing in her hands the sistrum and vase of the goddess who, of all the deities, was most closely associated with the future life. To her patronage and protection her priestess trusts for a prosperous voyage past the dangers of the last voyage, and a happy resting-place in Hades. The letters of the name, Alexandra, show that the monument belongs to the Roman age, though it is by no means wanting in charm.

This figure is characteristic of the late age of Attic reliefs, but parallels to it at an earlier period are not wanting. For example, an Athenian tomb of the fourth century[190] shows us a lady seated, to whom a young girl brings a tympanum or drum, the special instrument of the Phrygian Goddess Cybele. And a metrical inscription, which accompanies the design, tells us that the deceased lady was a priestess of Cybele. Cybele, at an earlier time, filled in some respects nearly the same place in the religion of the Athenians which Isis took in Hellenistic days. The paths of the dead were under her guardianship, and she might be trusted to ensure to her votaries a place in the world below.

CHAPTER X
FAMILY GROUPS

We next reach the ordinary family groups, a class of representations usual in the most beautiful and distinctive of the Athenian stelae. It is these which have captivated a long series of travellers and artists from Goethe onwards; and it is these which naturally rise before the imagination when the cemeteries of Athens are spoken of. Goethe has observed that the wind which blows from the tombs of the ancients comes with gentle breath as over a hill of roses. And there is no other series of monuments which seems to take us so readily into the daily life of the Greeks and to make us feel that they were men and women of like nature with ourselves, no longer cold and classic, but full of the warm blood and the gentle affections of ordinary humanity.

It is the natural pathos and the artistic charm of the family groups which adorn the majority of the tombs of ancient Athens, which strongly impress all visitors to that beautiful city, even visitors to whom most of the works of Greek sculpture do not convey any strong emotion. There is scarcely any one, however hardened by Puritanic training or the ubiquitous ugliness of modern surroundings against what is simple and true and lovely in art, who does not feel, through the hard shell of Philistinism, some touchings of sympathy and delight, if he spends a morning in the Cerameicus, or an afternoon in the sepulchral rooms of the National Museum. The influence of ancient Athens has made the cemetery of modern Athens, in spite of many incongruities, one of the most beautiful in the world. If, with the remembrance of Athens still fresh, we visit the great cemeteries of London, it is impossible to express the feeling of ugliness and bad taste, of jejuneness in design and poverty of execution with which they oppress the spirits. Religious hope and consolation are among us, a chill resignation was the natural attitude of the Greeks in the presence of death; and yet we counterbalance the superiority of our religion by the inferiority of our taste and perceptions.

It is very notable how complete in all these representations is the predominance of women, and how domestic is their tone. This fact can only be explained when we consider that these monuments belong, in the great majority of cases, to the time after the political greatness of Athens had been shattered at the battle of Aegospotami. In ancient Greece generally, and more especially at Athens, men gave to their wives and families only such time and care as they could spare from more engrossing occupations. By nature the Athenians were intensely political. And while Athens was a ruling power, and every citizen had a part in the game of politics played on a great scale, it was to public life that their thoughts and energies were directed, and the life of the home remained very much in the background. Every scholar is familiar with the contemptuous language applied by Aristophanes and Euripides to women; and Xenophon in his Oeconomics regards that girl as best bred who had seen and heard the least, and had but the virtue of modesty. Secluded homes like these were not likely to claim very much of the life of the man whose whole soul was bent on the extension of the Athenian Empire. The fact is that all noble deeds in the world are bought at a price, and part of the price paid for the unrivalled burst of public splendour at Athens in the fifth century was the seclusion of women and the institution of slavery.

But even in the Oeconomics of Xenophon we have the picture of a worthy citizen who gives much time and care to his home and his wife. And as public life decayed in the fourth century, and as manners became less severe, women became a more important element in the life of the community. The wife was no longer looked on as merely necessary for the production of citizens, while the courtesan accumulated vast wealth, and sometimes built temples or gave away cities. It is in the fourth century that a growing sympathy for child-life makes the children in Attic sculpture cease to be little men and women, and become real children. And it is the art of the fourth century which gives for the first time a noble and ideal expression of the life of the family, and the mutual love of its members.

The best plan will be, first to set before the reader several characteristic specimens of family groups, and afterwards to discuss the questions, many and not easily answered, which they suggest.