In the British Museum (the Roman corridor) is a tall inscribed slab of the headstone type, about 6½ ft. high (Fig. [44]). We may see clearly that it is a descendant of the steles by noting a few little points. It has the side pilasters and a pediment on which some lumps carry on the tradition of acroteria. An inscription occupies the field where the steles have sculptured reliefs, and a lower space is occupied by a festoon. From the inscription, NA ATIENI, it seems that it commemorated a man born in Athens. This slab is especially like a large stele at Cirencester which had two panels, the upper one having a relief and the lower an inscription. Proportions, pilasters, pediment are all like our London slab. Haverfield assigned the Cirencester slab to the end of the first century, and the London one can only be a little later. The inscription terminates with the early formula: H[IC] S[ITUS] EST.
Fig. 44.
This slab is much weathered and it stands at the Museum in a bad light, where it is difficult to make out the details. Running stems, with flowers on the pilasters, are quite pretty (Fig. [45]), and, indeed, the whole thing has dignity. The lettering was free and doubtless more elegant than the painted forms now suggest.
Several larger memorial slabs have been found in London which had big reliefs of soldiers. One at the Guildhall and another at Oxford will be described under sculpture. There are two fragments in the British Museum which may stand for the type and be discussed here. One is a head a little less than life-size, part of a standing figure in a round-topped recess. Above is an inscription naming Celsus a speculator; it was found at Blackfriars in 1876 (The Builder). This much-injured fragment appears very rude, but the others of this class were competent works of sculpture. The second is only a head now in the upper gallery at the Museum; both were probably works of the first half of the second century. Four known examples of this type must represent many—perhaps dozens which once existed.
Fig. 45.
At the Guildhall is a fragment of sepulchral sculpture, which may have been part of a larger monument rather than of a stele, but I will speak of it here. Just enough remains to allow of the restoration of the scheme. A winged Cupid at the end of a panel which doubtless bore an inscription, would have been one of a pair. The Cupid holds an ivy-leaf, symbol of the grave, and above is a festoon with a bird perched on it (Fig. [46]). Two or three grave slabs at Chester with reliefs of sepulchral banquets have similar festoons and birds which must have had symbolic reference to an after-life.
Fig. 46.