DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14144#0700
664
SARCOPHAGI.
of it as uncertain whether his body would be buried or burned. In
the first century of the Roman Empire, with which we are now more
immediately concerned, the burning of bodies was the prevailing,
though not the exclusive custom, and it was not until the time
of the Antonines that burying became once more general.1 It was
from this period, too, that the great majority of Sarcophagi have
come down to us, most of which are profusely adorned with plastic
ornament.
The Sarcophagus was a large stone coffin, capable of holding
one or two bodies (bisdmum). It derived its name (flesh-eater)
from having been first made of a stone found at Assos, in the
Troas, which is said to have consumed all the body but the
teeth in the course of forty days.2 The relief ornament on the
Sarcophagi, which were hewn from a single block, was generally
confined to the front and the two narrow ends, although in some
few cases, as in the Fngger Amazoii-Sarcopliagus in the Belvedere
Museum at Vienna, all four sides are similarly adorned.
From what has been said above, and especially from the very
late origin of nearly, though not quite, all the Sarcophagi which we
possess, we cannot of course look for any high degree of artistic
merit in the sculptures which adorn them. Yet some of the designs
bespeak and embody the deepest and noblest feelings and aspira-
tions of our nature. ' A whole cornucopia; of poetic flowers has
been poured out in the Roman sarcophagi over the resting-places of
the dead.'3
The subjects of the great majority of Sarcophagus reliefs are
either mythological or allegorical, and indicate an analog)' between
the fate of the deceased and some person renowned in fable. This
analogy is often of the most general kind, as, for example, where the
race of life is signified by the chariot race of Pelops and Oinotnaus,
or by a race of winged Cupids ; or where the toils and hardships,
the struggles and dangers, of human existence, are represented by
1 Lucian speaks too loosely when he says
that the Greeks burned and the Persians
buried their dead.
* l'lin. N. 11. ii. 98 and xxxvi. 27. The
name was subsequently applied indiscrim-
inately to all itone coffins, Conf. Juvenal,
x. 170, ' Sarcophago contentus est.'
a Feuerbach, Vatican, Apollo, p, 317.
SARCOPHAGI.
of it as uncertain whether his body would be buried or burned. In
the first century of the Roman Empire, with which we are now more
immediately concerned, the burning of bodies was the prevailing,
though not the exclusive custom, and it was not until the time
of the Antonines that burying became once more general.1 It was
from this period, too, that the great majority of Sarcophagi have
come down to us, most of which are profusely adorned with plastic
ornament.
The Sarcophagus was a large stone coffin, capable of holding
one or two bodies (bisdmum). It derived its name (flesh-eater)
from having been first made of a stone found at Assos, in the
Troas, which is said to have consumed all the body but the
teeth in the course of forty days.2 The relief ornament on the
Sarcophagi, which were hewn from a single block, was generally
confined to the front and the two narrow ends, although in some
few cases, as in the Fngger Amazoii-Sarcopliagus in the Belvedere
Museum at Vienna, all four sides are similarly adorned.
From what has been said above, and especially from the very
late origin of nearly, though not quite, all the Sarcophagi which we
possess, we cannot of course look for any high degree of artistic
merit in the sculptures which adorn them. Yet some of the designs
bespeak and embody the deepest and noblest feelings and aspira-
tions of our nature. ' A whole cornucopia; of poetic flowers has
been poured out in the Roman sarcophagi over the resting-places of
the dead.'3
The subjects of the great majority of Sarcophagus reliefs are
either mythological or allegorical, and indicate an analog)' between
the fate of the deceased and some person renowned in fable. This
analogy is often of the most general kind, as, for example, where the
race of life is signified by the chariot race of Pelops and Oinotnaus,
or by a race of winged Cupids ; or where the toils and hardships,
the struggles and dangers, of human existence, are represented by
1 Lucian speaks too loosely when he says
that the Greeks burned and the Persians
buried their dead.
* l'lin. N. 11. ii. 98 and xxxvi. 27. The
name was subsequently applied indiscrim-
inately to all itone coffins, Conf. Juvenal,
x. 170, ' Sarcophago contentus est.'
a Feuerbach, Vatican, Apollo, p, 317.