The design in fig. 97 is from an archaic relief[843] of the sixth century B.C., now in the local Museum at Sparta. It forms one of a series of reliefs found near Sparta, all of which are cast approximately in the same type. A male and a female figure are seated side by side on a great throne-like chair. The female figure holds her veil, the male figure a large cantharus or two-handled cup, as if expecting libation. Worshippers of diminutive size approach with offerings—a cock and some object that may be a cake, an egg or a fruit. The reliefs are, for the most part, uninscribed, but on some of rather later date names are written near the figure, and they are the names of mortals, e.g. ‘Timocles[844].’ It is clear that we have in these monuments representations of the dead, but the dead conceived of as half divine, as heroized—hence their large size compared with that of their worshipping descendants. They are κρείττονες, ‘Better and Stronger Ones.’ [Illustration: FIG. 97.] The artist of the relief in fig. 97 is determined to make his meaning clear. Behind the chair, equal in height to the seated figures, is a great curled snake, but a snake strangely fashioned. From the edge of his lower lip hangs down a long beard; a decoration denied by nature. The intention is clear; he is a _human_ snake, the vehicle, the incarnation of the dead man’s ghost. Snakes lurk about tombs, they are uncanny-looking beasts, and the Greeks are not the only people who have seen in a snake the vehicle of a ghost. M. Henri Jumod[845], in discussing the beliefs of the Barongas, notes that among this people the snake is regarded as the _chikonembo_ or ghost of a dead man, usually of an ancestor. The snake, so regarded, is feared but not worshipped. A free-thinker among the Barongas, if bored by the too frequent reappearance of the snake ancestor, will kill it, saying ‘Come now, we have had enough of you.’ Zeus Meilichios, it has been seen (p. 18), was worshipped as a snake. If we examine the great snake on his relief in fig. 1 (p. 18) it is seen to be also bearded. The beard in this case is not at the end of the lip, but a good deal further back. The addition of the beard was no doubt mainly due to frank anthropomorphism; the snake is in a transition stage between animal and human, and human for the artist means divine. He gives the snake a beard to mark his anthropomorphic divinity, just as he gave to the bull river-god on coins a human head with horns. The further question arises, ‘Was there anything in nature that might have acted as a possible suggestion of a beard?’ An interesting answer to this question has been suggested to me by an eminent authority on snakes, Dr Hans Gadow, and to him I am indebted for the following scientific particulars.