(_a_) Passeri, Millin, Lanzi, and Visconti supposed that allusions were made to the life of the deceased person in whose tomb they were found; allegorical representations were given of his childish games, his youthful pastimes, or the religious and social ceremonies in which he took part. (_b_) Italynski, in his preface to Tischbein’s work, enunciates the strange notion that they allude to events of Greek and Roman history: for instance, three draped men represent the three chief archons of Athens, or three women conversing, Veturia, the mother of Coriolanus, with her daughter and daughter-in-law, considering whether she should appear as a suppliant before her son. The utterly fantastic and unscientific nature of these explanations was self-evident; the writers of the first group at any rate had a sounder basis for their theories, and on the analogy of the sculptured Greek tombstones might well have been near the truth. (_c_) Another theory, which attained great popularity, and was even adhered to partially for some years afterwards by Panofka, Gerhard, and Lenormant, was that the subjects bore allusion to the Mysteries, more particularly the Eleusinian. The vases were regarded as presents given to the initiated, and the reason why their interpretation was so difficult was that they related to the secrets unfolded in those ceremonies. Many attempts were made to unlock those secrets and to show the mystic moral purport of the pictures; but all is the merest guesswork. The height of fantastic explanation is perhaps reached by Christie, whose work is quite worth perusal as a literary curiosity. Panofka, on the other hand, turned his attention to the inscriptions on the vases,[36] and discerned a symbolical meaning in these, reading into the names of artists rebuses on the subjects over which they were inscribed, _e.g._ Douris is indicated by Athena with a spear (δόρυ) or Hermaios by a figure of Hermes. (3) =Historical.=—The historical or scientific method of studying Greek vases consists mainly in classifying them according to different periods, and within that period to different schools. To these main considerations the artistic merits of the vases and the explanation of the subjects are subordinated. The reason for this is obvious. The artistic and mythological interest of the vases is soon exhausted, and receives no new impetus from new discoveries. Now, with the comparative study of vases this is not the case. Any day may bring forth a new discovery which will completely revolutionise all preconceived theories; hence there is the constant necessity for being “up-to-date,” and for the adjustment of old beliefs to new.