On Pl. XVIII will be found a somewhat exceptional subject, father and children only. Seated on a chair of the convenient domestic shape, Euempolus, as he is styled in the inscription, holds in one hand a bird, and extends a finger of the other hand to the children in front of him, of whom the nearer, clad in an over-garment only, seems to be a boy; the further, who wears also a tunic, is apparently a girl. Both have their long hair done up in a roll, and both have the stiff air which is usual in case of children of the fifth century. Another work of the same early period is the stele of Xanthippus in the British Museum ([Fig. 65])[191]. The object in the hand of Xanthippus has been a puzzle to archaeologists. The prevailing view takes it for a shoe-maker’s last, and supposes that Xanthippus, far from being ashamed of his trade, glories in it even on his
Plate XVIII
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FIG. 65. XANTHIPPUS AND CHILDREN.
tomb. But an objection to this view is that trades were certainly not held in high honour among freemen anywhere in Greece. The name Xanthippus too, which belonged to the family of Pericles, was one of the noblest at Athens, and it seems impossible that it can have been borne by a mere cobbler. It seems more likely therefore that what Xanthippus really holds is a votive offering; perhaps some memorial of a cure wrought on one of his feet by Asklepius. The other hand of the hero rests on the neck of his little daughter, while an older girl or perhaps his wife holds a bird. The work is almost contemporary with the Parthenon frieze; the monument most dignified and charming.
The earliest and one of the most interesting of the groups which represent a mother and her children is the so-called Leucothea relief in the Villa Albani ([Pl. XIX]). A mother, clad in a sleeved Ionic tunic and an over-dress, is seated dandling on her knee her youngest infant, a little girl who stretches out to her a loving hand. Under the seat is the matronly work-basket. In front two elder girls approach their mother, and behind them a maid-servant, also clad in the Ionian dress, brings a wreath.
Before the consideration of this delightful group begins, we must observe that the clumsy right hand of the infant and the head of the nurse are modern restorations. The rest of the design, though of archaic stiffness, and dating from a time not later than the Persian wars, shows the greatest promise. The arm of the mother as seen through the sleeve, and the forms of the infant’s body, are rendered with care and delicacy. It is only necessary to compare the details with those of the figures on the Harpy Tomb of Xanthus ([Fig. 27]) in order to recognize how vastly superior the artists of Greece proper at the time were to those of Lycia, especially in the sense of the proportions of the body, and the art of so arranging drapery as to display rather than to conceal them.