at any rate, is plain, that the dead youth, in spite of his splendid
following, goes to meet a sorrowful fate. What can the sound of the
instruments avail when Charun’s claw is laid on his shoulder!
[Illustration: FIG. 42. RELIEF ON A TOMB ALTAR FROM CHIUSI
In the Barracco Collection in Rome]
[Illustration: FIG. 43. CINERARY URN FROM CHIUSI]
[Sidenote: TOMBA DEL CARDINALE]
This tomb dates, as far as can be judged by the style of the painting,
from the first half of the fourth century B.C.[115] From the beginning
of the next century dates the Tomba del Cardinale at Corneto, which
was discovered shortly after 1760,[116] then forgotten and filled in
again, and finally reopened in 1786[117] by Cardinal Garambi, bishop
of Corneto. It has suffered much by exposure to wind and weather and
to tourists for more than a hundred and fifty years. It has a narrow
frieze with battle scenes, doubtless mythological, but the interest
is centred in the long narrow frieze of pictures under the ceiling.
The subject of this is the march of the shades towards the other side
(fig. 46). A woman is drawn on a two-wheeled cart by two winged demons,
one light and the other blue-black, both wearing the traditional garb
of the genii of death, familiar from the contemporary sarcophagi
and cinerary urns: a shirt with braces, and high top boots. This is
perhaps the young woman who is mentioned in the inscription of the
tomb: ‘Ramtha, daughter of Vel and Vestrcni, who was wife (_puia_) of
Larth Lartha, and who lived (_valce_ instead of _svalce_) nineteen
years.’ A young man follows in a long cloak: he turns round to a black,
winged demon carrying a hammer (fig. 47). Beyond the gateway of the
underworld behind him a devil of the same type is seated, and then
comes a crowd of young people driven along by two devils, one of whom
threatens them with his hammer.[118] A woman, who looks back moaning,
is being brutally dragged along by two male demons, and at the end of
the procession two winged devils are seen hastening forward, slender of
limb and agile of movement, like poisonous insects. In a fragment of a
frieze, which is now badly damaged, the Charun devil was once more seen
in the act of crushing a skull with his hammer.[119]
[Illustration: FIG. 44. ROMAN SARCOPHAGUS IN THE NY CARLSBERG GLYPTOTEK]
[Illustration: FIG. 47. PART OF THE FRIEZE IN THE TOMBA DEL CARDINALE]
[Illustration: FIG. 46. PAINTED FRIEZE IN THE TOMBA DEL CARDINALE]
[Illustration: FIG. 45. PROCESSION OF THE DEAD IN THE TOMBA DEL
TIFONE]
[Sidenote: CONCEPTION OF THE HEREAFTER]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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