Perry, Walter Copland: Greek and Roman sculpture: a popular introduction to the history of Greek and Roman sculpture (London, 1882)

S/XEXS OX TOMBS.

3°5

Ceramicus in Athens, and are either in situ or in one of the museums
of that city. We subjoin two of the most interesting, one of them
that of a beautifully draped figure of a deceased woman, to whom
her attendant is offering the jewel casket, which so often plays a part
on Greek gravestones ; and another (from Lamia ? in Thessaly) of a
deceased youth (fig. 122), who is stretching out his hand to a bird cage,
while his favourite animal, a cat, sits near him on a pillar. In the
corner is the typical boy, who appears to be mourning.

A very common ornament of Attic graves is the Siren (fig. 123),
generally holding a lyre fashioned from a
tortoise-shell ; and sometimes blowing the double
flute. The Sirens often appear in the character-
of mourners or ' wailcrs,' tearing their hair and
beating their breasts to denote the extremity of
grief. Euripides refers to them in this sense,
and calls them irapBevoi yoovos Kopat.1 But
they also typify the delusive nature of human
delights and pleasures which lure men on, like
the followers of Odysseus, to inevitable death
and decay.2 They may be looked on as the
Muses of the calm and bright but treacherous sea.

Other reliefs of the Attic school, whether of

SIREN.

the older or younger may fairly be doubted,

are the sepulchral Stele of Phrasiclcia ; of Amcinoclcia ; of llcgcso ;
of Dcmctria and Pamphile; of the Athenian Dexileos on horseback,
who fell in the Corinthian war (394 B.C.) at the age of tw enty ;
and many others of great beaut)', all in Athens; JMcdca Astcro-
pcia and Antinoc (in the Lateran), in which Mcdca is pcrsuad-

some arc from the liest period. - The phases of character attributed to the

IV. Stela; with painted figures instead of Sirens are very numerous. Pausan. (i. 21.

carved reliefs, or with only a simple inscrip- 2) says that when Sophocles died, Dionysus

lion. The locus classicus on this subject is ordered the Athenians to honour him as 'a
in Pausanias, ii. 7. 3 : Ti> pir (ri-^a TV *ft*" Sutm.' Christodorus {Ecphr. 350) says,

touiti \l6ov Si oixoSo/uTiffai'Tfs k^jpriSa hiavat referring to Homer, flifpiK^s 2tiprjros ap-qiov

i<pajTu(ri, «a\ iV airoU triBrifia toioiVi (pyov tfatrtm. K. Curtius connects the

Kara tous dfTouj/inAio-Ta Toi/s iv toij »'ao?s. Sirens with Aphrodite, 'DieSirene ist nur

This Merifia represented the house of the eine Form der Aphrodite. Sic wallet aufGrii-

deceased, I he parting scene, or the adoration ben und lriidhdfen wie die Aphrodite
of the women. 1 Eurip. HA. 167. Fprtymbk.*—Artk. Zcil. N. F. iii. p. 10.