Sculptured tombs of Hellas

by Percy Gardner

The Tomb of the Satrap is assigned by Studniczka to the middle of the fifth century, and though the freedom of pose of some of the figures sculptured on it may make us hesitate before accepting quite so early a date, it certainly belongs to the century. Three of the four scenes which adorn the sides and ends of the tomb are clearly scenes from the history of one man, no doubt the hero contained in it, a personage represented as having a long beard, and usually wearing the conical hat of the Persians and Phrygians. The scene of one of the ends ([Fig. 80])[318] recalls the gable of the Nereid monument. The bearded man reclines on a couch at table, holding in his hand a winecup. His wife is seated at his feet; in attendance on him are two young men, one of whom fills a rhyton or drinking horn from a jug. We have here a scheme closely like that of the sepulchral banquet of Athens. And though the reference may be primarily to the family repast of the palace, yet considering that the sculptor was a Greek, it is scarcely likely that all reference to what was beyond the tomb was wholly absent from his mind. The wine which the hero drinks may very well be that poured in libation at his grave.

FIG. 80. SARCOPHAGUS OF THE SATRAP: END.

At the opposite end of the sarcophagus are represented four of the body-guard, conversing one with the other. On one of its sides is a scene of leave-taking. The hero sits on a throne, resting his arm Zeus-like on a sceptre, while behind him stand two of the women of his household. Before him is a young man, no doubt a son, stepping into a chariot to which four horses are already yoked, and of which he holds the reins. He turns to say a word of farewell to his father. Two other young men are present: one holds in the horses of the chariot, the other stands ready to mount a horse, and to ride beside it. Here again we have a scene to which abundant parallels may be found among the Attic grave-reliefs. The departure of a warrior or a horseman is, as we have already seen[319], an ordinary subject on the stelae of Athens and elsewhere. It may be that the son is setting out on a military expedition which brought his father fame and increase of territory.

On the fourth side of the tomb, father and son are again prominent. It is a hunting scene. In the midst is a panther turning to bay, which father and son charge at the same moment on horseback from one side and the other. On the left a young horseman has struck down a stag, and to balance him on the right is represented a horse galloping away in a panic, having thrown his rider, whom he drags with him. There can be little doubt that all these scenes are out of the life of the person to whom the tomb is devoted, and in all his son appears with him, very probably the successor who had the sarcophagus made. The subsidiary figures may be either younger sons or merely attendants. Unfortunately we have no historical data for the assignment of the tomb to any particular ruler of Sidon.

M. Reinach insists with justice on the importance of this tomb as a monument of the great art of Ionia of the fifth century, an art of which little has come down to us, but of the splendour of which we can judge from the statements of ancient writers. Our sarcophagus lies half-way between the reliefs of Assyria, recording the great deeds of the kings, in an exaggerated and ideal historical record, and the sculpture of purely Greek monuments such as the Mausoleum, where the battles of Greeks and Amazons, of Lapiths and Centaurs, take the place of the contests of ordinary men. The Lycian Tomb and that of the Mourning Women belong almost entirely to the idealizing tendency of Greek sculpture already spoken of, which translated the present into the past and the human into the heroic. With the age of Alexander the historic tendency once more prevails, since the deeds of Alexander and his contemporaries might well seem pitched at a level quite as high as the mythic exploits of Herakles and Theseus.

The Lycian Tomb may be dated about the year 420. It owes its name to its curious form, a form common in Lycia, the cover being set on in the shape of a Gothic arch. The conjecture has been hazarded that it was originally made for a Lycian chief and carried off by its Phoenician proprietor; but for this view there is not much evidence.

FIG. 81. SPHINXES: LYCIAN SARCOPHAGUS.

The two ends are adorned, with consummate taste and adaptation to space, with mythic subjects. Above, at one end, are a pair of griffins, at the other a pair of sphinxes, whose beautiful faces might be those of two angels of death ([Fig. 81]). Below are Centaurs in carefully balanced groups. The sides of the tomb bear reliefs the subjects of which are taken from daily life, but daily life treated quite generally, and with a view to the laws of sculptural composition rather than with any intention to set forth the history of a life. On one side two Amazons, each in a four-horse chariot and attended by a female charioteer, attack a lion. On the other side five men on horseback close in upon a boar. The hunters are all young men of the type of the riders on the frieze of the Parthenon, to some of whom in fact they bear a very close resemblance. But the chariot used for lion-hunting savours rather of Assyria than of Greece. The reliefs were fully coloured, such accessories as reins and spears being filled in in metal.