Gardner, Percy: The principles of Greek art (London, 1924)

IV

THE HOUSE AND THE TOMB

59

horse. In all European countries the possession of horses has
been the mark of an aristocratic or knightly caste; and in
Greek religion it belonged notably to those leaders in war who
had become demigods or heroes, who had been, so to speak,
canonized by popular belief and trust. In the reliefs of which
I speak, the hero rides or leads his horse, and is often greeted by
a lady of more than human statue who pours wine for him, a
lady who in this case can scarcely be regarded as his wife, but
must rather be an emblem of his reception into the abodes of
the immortals, as Hebe received the deified Heracles.

Fig. 6. — Horseman relief : British Museum.1

A class of reliefs which belongs to a much later time repre-
sents the deceased as reclining on a couch, and being plied with
food and drink by votaries. This seems to indicate a revival
rather than a survival in later Greece of the ancestor-worship
which had in the period of highest idealism passed into the back-
ground, and been overshadowed by the bright religion of Olym-

1 Sculptured Tombs, p. 96.