Gardner, Percy: Sculptured tombs of Hellas (London, 1896)

CHAPTER VII

heroizing reliefs

Before we proceed further, one distinction of importance
has to be made. It will be found that all the sepulchral
monuments of Greece belong to one of two classes: —

1. Actual tombs, whether temples, or tables, or slabs hewn
to be let into the ground.

2. Commemorative tablets. These may readily be dis-
tinguished in form, because their width is greater than their
height, whereas in the true grave-stele, the height is greater
than the width. They were made usually not to be fixed into
the ground of the cemetery, but to be set up in chapels or
mounted on walls in its neighbourhood. An example will be
found in PI. III. These slabs have a closer relation to actual
cultus than have the gravestones. Their likeness in shape and
in composition to tablets dedicated to the deities is obvious.
In fact they belonged to the chapels and shrines sacred to
the worship of heroes and exalted ancestors, rather than to the
ordinary dead.

When we proceed to trace down the lines of descent of
the memorials of ancestor-worship from Sparta in various
districts of Greece, we shall find that some of these lines lead
us to groups of actual tombstones, but more usually they
lead to dedicatory reliefs, closely connected with the cultus of
the dead, but not usually coming from actual cemeteries.

One line takes us to the so-called sepulchral banquets of