There is ancient authority for the view that the vase indicates an unmarried person. Eustath. on _Il._ XXIII., 141, p. 1293: [Greek: kai tois pro gamou de teleutôsin hê loutrophoros, phasin, epetitheto kalpis eis endeixin tou hoti aloutos ta nymphika kai agonos apeisi]. Demosthenes (_in Leochar._ pp. 1086 and 1089, ed. Reiske) speaks also of [Greek: hê loutrophoros] (sc. [Greek: hydria] or [Greek: kalpis]), being placed on the tomb of an unmarried person. (Kumanudis, p. 18; _Greek Inscriptions in Brit. Mus._, No. lxxx.) On the other hand, the tombs of a father, Philoxenos, and of his sons Parthenios and Dion, in the Cerameicos at Athens were all surmounted by stone vases (_C. I. A._, ii., 3191-3193; Conze, p. 16). Perhaps a distinction must be made between the lekythi which represent libations at the tomb, and the hydriae, which have the special meaning mentioned above. An early instance of the Attic sepulchral vase, with painting and relief, is placed by Köhler on epigraphic grounds between 450 and 430 B.C. (_Athenische Mittheilungen_, x., pl. 13, p. 362.) _Figures clasping Hands._--In Attic reliefs, chiefly of the fourth and subsequent centuries, the two principal persons are often represented clasping right hands together, and such scenes are commonly known as Scenes of Parting. A more correct interpretation may be gathered from a fragment of an archaic sepulchral relief from Aegina (_Athenische Mittheilungen_, viii., pl. 17), in which a female figure, enthroned and holding a pomegranate (compare the Spartan reliefs mentioned below), clasps the hand of a standing figure, which is shown by the scale to be that of another deceased person. In this case the scene is laid in Hades, and the clasping of the hands is significant of affection, not of separation. Hence it has been thought that all subjects with the clasped hands represent the meeting and union in Hades after death (Furtwaengler, _Coll. Sabouroff_, i., p. 46). There is, however, no proof that the artist was always consciously placing the scene in Hades, and in No. 710 Hermes seems about to conduct the deceased person to the nether world. The presence of figures in attitudes of grief, of children and servants, seems to show that these reliefs are symbolic of family affection, though the artist had no very clear and logical conception of the moment depicted. An early example of the clasping of hands on an Attic monument is supplied by the sepulchral vase above mentioned, of 450-430 B.C. (_Athenische Mittheilungen_, x., pl. 13.)