DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14547#0043
31
ues of mourning women or armed servants, or more fre-
quently of great mastiffs, lions or fabulous beings, sphinxes
and sirens, the birds with human heads which for many cen-
turies had ranked among the symbolic guardians of the soul
in Egypt and the Near East. The Greeks had adopted them
from early times and given them the name by which they
are still known. But by the fifth century they had changed
into beautiful maidens, with wings and birds' legs alone de-
noting their fabulous origin. These later sirens appear as
mourners, tearing their hair or singing dirges which they ac-
company on the lyre.
Our Plates 30-32 convey at least a pallid idea of such an
assembly of fine marbles. Behind them the graves were cut
into the soft rock, the corpses stretched out in large stone cof-
fins, with only a very few and simple gifts. The age of sump-
tuous funeral furniture had long passed away. Every twenty
or thirty years, the level of the terraces behind the tombstones
would be raised just high enough to accommodate an upper
row of burials. Cross-roads or lanes led from the main Street
of Tombs to the upper terraces. At the most important of
these cross-roads, opposite the tomb tentatively connected with
Alcibiades, the oldest lot of the terraced area marks the begin-
ning of this unrivaled array of funeral monuments.
An historical event provides a fixed date here. A young
cavalry officer, Dexileos, was killed in action before Corinth,
in 394 B. C. According to Periclean tradition he was buried
in an official tomb on the Dromos (above P. 24), together
with the other victims of that expedition. But his family,
wishing to commemorate his heroic death, acquired an es- Plates
pecially well-situated corner lot in the newly established ceme- j_/
tery and made it into a cenotaph or precinct in honor of the
dead. Its peculiar shape, the segment of a circle, brings out
the full beauty of the relief which dominates it: Dexileos is
riding over a fallen foe, victoriously as Greek art always rep-
resented those who had fallen in battle. An inscription below
the relief reads: "Dexileos son of Lysanias from Thorikos (a
small town on the eastern shore of Attica) was born under the
ues of mourning women or armed servants, or more fre-
quently of great mastiffs, lions or fabulous beings, sphinxes
and sirens, the birds with human heads which for many cen-
turies had ranked among the symbolic guardians of the soul
in Egypt and the Near East. The Greeks had adopted them
from early times and given them the name by which they
are still known. But by the fifth century they had changed
into beautiful maidens, with wings and birds' legs alone de-
noting their fabulous origin. These later sirens appear as
mourners, tearing their hair or singing dirges which they ac-
company on the lyre.
Our Plates 30-32 convey at least a pallid idea of such an
assembly of fine marbles. Behind them the graves were cut
into the soft rock, the corpses stretched out in large stone cof-
fins, with only a very few and simple gifts. The age of sump-
tuous funeral furniture had long passed away. Every twenty
or thirty years, the level of the terraces behind the tombstones
would be raised just high enough to accommodate an upper
row of burials. Cross-roads or lanes led from the main Street
of Tombs to the upper terraces. At the most important of
these cross-roads, opposite the tomb tentatively connected with
Alcibiades, the oldest lot of the terraced area marks the begin-
ning of this unrivaled array of funeral monuments.
An historical event provides a fixed date here. A young
cavalry officer, Dexileos, was killed in action before Corinth,
in 394 B. C. According to Periclean tradition he was buried
in an official tomb on the Dromos (above P. 24), together
with the other victims of that expedition. But his family,
wishing to commemorate his heroic death, acquired an es- Plates
pecially well-situated corner lot in the newly established ceme- j_/
tery and made it into a cenotaph or precinct in honor of the
dead. Its peculiar shape, the segment of a circle, brings out
the full beauty of the relief which dominates it: Dexileos is
riding over a fallen foe, victoriously as Greek art always rep-
resented those who had fallen in battle. An inscription below
the relief reads: "Dexileos son of Lysanias from Thorikos (a
small town on the eastern shore of Attica) was born under the