This is doubtless a real tombstone; but the same can scarcely be said of the beautiful relief which represents the final parting of Orpheus and Eurydice (Pl. XXIX). Orpheus has dared the perils of the world below and surmounted them. He has led the recovered Eurydice to the very confines of the world of shades; and at that moment his disobedience to the law of Hades, which forbade him to look back, has once more deprived him of his bride. Hermes claims her back, and the lovers must part finally[216]. That this beautiful relief, the date of the original of which is about 400 B.C., has some connexion with the grave seems clear; the subject is sepulchral, and the sentiment of the group, gentle and subdued, is closely like that of Athenian tombs. At the same time the form of the relief, low and broad, proves that it is not part of an ordinary monument: rather it was meant to be inserted in a wall. It may be a sort of ‘elegant extract,’ like so many of the copies of the Roman age. The subject and treatment of some celebrated sepulchral monument may have been copied in marble for a Roman amateur, and taken out of its original connexion. CHAPTER XI MEANING AND STYLE OF THE RELIEFS For the interpretation and full appreciation of the Attic reliefs, it is important to discuss somewhat carefully a fundamental question, which may be set forth in several ways. Is their allusion primarily to the life of the past or the life of the future? Is the scene of them Athens or Hades? Is the hand-taking a sign of parting or of re-union in a world of spirits? In a word, do they point backward or forward? In this controversy the names of eminent archaeologists appear on both sides. But to the English reader it will be more satisfactory to find a brief statement of the arguments cited on this side and on that, than to learn what line has been taken by the various authorities[217]. The view which makes the future the time, and the spiritworld the scene of the sculptured reliefs has in its favour many analogies, and will naturally commend itself to those who are attracted by the investigations of comparative religion. There can be little doubt that the seated pair of the Spartan monuments are regarded as holding their court as heroized dead. And a number of intermediate links connect these clearly marked memorials of ancestor-worship with the usual Attic groups in an almost uninterrupted series, so that to draw [Illustration: PLATE XXIX _Page 182_ ] a line of division at any point between backward-looking and forward-looking representations is by no means easy. Let us follow a few of these series. In the Spartan relief (Pl. II) the heroic pair hold in their hands the winecup and the pomegranate, drink and food of spirits. The hero of Fig. 30 holds both. Both may be found repeatedly also on the stelae of Athens and the rest of Greece.