Sculptured tombs of Hellas

by Percy Gardner

These two heroic pairs are probably the proprietors of the sacred enclosure, which was built like a finely carved casket to hold their ashes. In the decoration of the casket we find one Oriental motive. Over the door inside is a line of dwarfs, or of repetitions of the Egyptian monster Bes, holding musical instruments or dancing. Here we have a touch lent by a religion less refined and artistic than that of the anthropomorphic Greeks. The rest of the reliefs take their subjects from the legendary tales of Greece. We do not appear to have here, as on the Nereid monument, allusions to the lives of the buried heroes. There is no scene which bears the impress of history. The Greek artists who were employed by the wealthy Lycian family to adorn the wall seem to have been left quite free in their choice of subjects. So they run on almost without plan, from tale to tale and from scene to scene. Sometimes we have two subjects, one above the other, quite independent one of the other. Sometimes the two lines of decorations are occupied with a single scene.

It would be useless to attempt to describe in detail scenes which we are unable to set before the eyes of the reader. The landing of the Greeks at Troy, the siege of the City, the battle of Achilles with the Amazons who come to its rescue, Odysseus meeting Penelope, and shooting down the suitors, are taken from the cycle of Trojan legend. Then we have the hunting of the Calydonian boar, the carrying off of the daughters of Leucippus, the expedition of the Seven against Thebes, all portrayed with the freedom which Greek artists use, always ready to subordinate strict fidelity to tradition to the necessities of art and the love of balance and measure. The interest of those scenes is great, but it does not belong to our subject. The art is not sepulchral, but of the myth-loving kind which prevails in the decoration of Greek temples, and which once marked the lost masterpieces of the great Greek painters. Professor Benndorf has tried, and not unsuccessfully, to prove that in the reliefs of Gyeulbashi we may find clear traces of the influence of the great Thasian painter Polygnotus, another of whose lines of influence reached the sculptors of the Parthenon. The Lycian heroon and the Attic temple are works of about the same period, widely as they differ in some respects. At Athens the influence of Polygnotus is fairly and fully translated into sculptural style. In Lycia the sculptor has less transforming vigour, and he retains in the work of the chisel some conventions appropriate only to the work of the brush.

One other important tomb must be mentioned which was built in Asia, though its construction is purely Greek, its material the marble of Pentelicus, and its erection on the coast of Asia Minor no more than an instance of the fortune of war.

FIG. 77. LION-TOMB, CNIDUS.

Among the discoveries, with the fruits of which Sir Charles Newton enriched the British Museum, there were few which he valued more highly than that of the Lion-tomb of Cnidus. The huge lion, which is now in the Mausoleum Room of the British Museum, reclined on the top of a building made solid to receive his vast weight, looking out over the Carian Sea. We engrave ([Fig. 77]) the whole monument as restored by Mr. Pullan[298].

It can scarcely be contended that the lion is a great work of sculpture. His size is imposing and his attitude monumental, but the head and body alike lack character and force. This is true of all the lions of Greek artists of the period, the great lion set up in memory of Chaeroneia, those which adorned the Mausoleum, and others. The fact is that the Greeks between the days of the Persian Wars and those of Alexander knew nothing of the lion, probably scarcely ever saw one, dead or alive. So their artistic and idealizing tendency had to work without constant reference to, and correction by, nature. Thus, while the types of the horse, the bull, and the dog went on developing on the lines of love and appreciation of nature, the type of the lion became fantastic and poor. The soul of the lion does not inhabit the bodies prepared for it by Greek artists.

Nevertheless the Cnidian monument has its interest. It is conjectured, with a high degree of probability, that it was set up by Conon, after his great victory of 394 B.C. over the Spartan fleet at Cnidus. It commemorates alike the battle and the Athenians who fell in it. It is an Attic tomb though not erected in Attica, more imposing as a historical monument than the reliefs of the Cerameicus, but inferior to them in the higher artistic qualities.

Our subject being Greek sculptured tombs, we must leave out of consideration one of the most important classes of Hellenic or semi-Hellenic graves, that which belongs to the Greek colonists of the Crimea and their barbarous Scythic allies[299]. In the neighbourhood of the ancient Panticapaeum, a city closely connected with Athens by ties of commerce and alliance, there are many mound-graves, which being opened have been found to contain lofty vaulted chambers, in shape and design not unlike the treasuries of Mycenae and Orchomenus, but of a far later age, belonging in fact mostly to the fourth century, which seems to have been the golden age of Panticapaeum. These graves have no important architectural features and no sculptural adornment. But they have in many cases preserved to our days their contents, a rich spoil of gold and bronze, of Greek vases and barbarous armour, of ornaments and coins. By an art-loving and paternal government, these important relics of the most northerly branch of the Hellenic stock have been carefully collected and preserved, forming to-day one of the most splendid attractions of the Hermitage Museum at St. Petersburg.

They are also luxuriously published in official publications of the Russian Government, offering to the student of history a new chapter, showing how, in the Crimea of old, Greek and Scythian met, how the Greek refined the Scythian and supplied him with admirable works of art, and how the Scythian lent the Greek armour and clothes, besides no doubt supplying him with timber, corn, and skins. And to the student of art they exhibit the richness and the taste displayed by Athenian craftsmen in the fourth century, in the production even of the smallest and least considered of the appliances of daily life.