Plate XXIII
Page 170
Plate XXIV
Page 170
a painted scene of a similar character, depicted on the tomb of a lady named Neotima, who was represented lying back in the exhaustion of death, brought about by childbirth, while her mother Mnasylla hung over her, and her father Aristoteles stood by, resting his head on his hand, in the usual attitude of grief. Curiously enough, the presence of the husband is not mentioned, nor even his name. Perhaps the commonness of death in childbirth at Athens needs a word of explanation. It may be accounted for partly perhaps by the sedentary life of Athenian women, but more especially by the fact that help in the crisis was not usually afforded by physicians, but by midwives, who had had no training save that which is gained by practice. The resort to male accoucheurs was condemned by the instinctive delicacy of the Attic women.
We must cite one more relief of this class, though it is of interest not for the representation which it bears, which is quite ordinary, but for the inscription[202]. A seated woman, veiled, gives her hand to a standing veiled figure, a bearded man standing in the background. Over the head of the seated figure is inscribed, Χοι�ίνη τίτθη. Choerine then is a wet-nurse, and the lady to whom she gives her hand is probably her foster-child whom she has brought up, and who, even after marriage, retains affection for her old nurse, and erects a monument in honour of her fidelity. This monument stands by no means alone; it is one of many set up both by men and women in memory of their nurses. Such facts show that in Greece, though the nurse would commonly be a slave, natural affection and gratitude often triumphed over social convention, and she was regarded as a friend rather than as a dependant.
Another group of reliefs is even more thoroughly feminine. It is dominated by the idea of adornment. The well-born ladies of Athens took, as we know, great pains to enhance by art the charms which nature had liberally bestowed upon them. The rouge-pot was a well-known part of their arsenal, and is sometimes found in their graves. They were not, like modern women, the humble slaves of a fashion which constantly changes. The form and disposition of their garments varies but little from century to century. But they were very particular as to pattern and texture, and very careful that each garment should fall in the most graceful and becoming folds. For jewelry they seem to have had a strong liking, and it may be urged as a palliation of so frivolous a taste that the Greek jewelry which has come down to us is in very good taste. The custom of adorning oneself with huge diamonds and rubies, as a proof of wealth, would have been considered barbaric in Greece. Jewelry was mainly of gold, or even gilt bronze, of little material value, but wrought by cunning workmen, in complete disregard of time, with exquisite care and subtilty[203], so as to be in itself a thing of art as well as a mere decoration. If stones were inserted in the metal, they were quite common stones, sards and onyxes and the like, not cut in facets, but carved in the form of scarabs, or engraved with beautifully cut designs in intaglio. Like the dress, the pottery, and the coins of the Greeks, and all the other surroundings of their life, their jewels exhibited on a smaller scale the same unrivalled artistic taste which is shown on a larger scale by their temples and their sculpture.