It has been said that the reference to the past in such cases may be explained from the Greek notion that the future life was a continuation of the past on the same lines but in a ghostly fashion. But this statement will not bear a closer examination. An earthly hunter may hunt in Elysium: possibly a warrior may be imagined as finding new and ghostly enemies to overthrow. But could it be for a moment supposed that a woman would spend her time in Hades in repetitions of sickness and death, or that a physician would find there need for the exercise of his old craft? It is thus abundantly clear that in some at least of the Attic reliefs the backward look prevails. The class of reliefs from which we may best illustrate the two different fashions of interpretation is the very large class in which is represented hand-giving, the Greek δεξίωσις. Sometimes one of the pair who are hand in hand is standing and one seated: sometimes both are standing. There are three ways in which the attitude of the pair may be interpreted. First it may be taken to mark a mere family group, an Attic interior scene, a portrait of husband and wife or father and son in a connexion which marks their unity of feeling and mutual affection. Second, we may combine with this idea that of parting. To this view I have inclined in a previous chapter. Third, we may take the hand-giving as indicating the reception in Hades by those who have gone before of their kindred who follow them. In the funeral oration of Hyperides there is a passage[231] which is cited in favour of this view, in which the orator speaks of the heroes of old in Hades [Illustration: PLATE XXX _Page 186_ ] greeting, with a δεξίωσις their descendants who follow them in the way of virtue and honour. So in the poets also, as we have above seen, there are frequent references to the life of the re-united family in Hades. And in fact a hope of such re-union seems to have existed among all peoples in which family life was highly developed. We can scarcely venture to rule any of these views out of court. We can indeed venture to say that in the Athenian reliefs as they reach us, the setting is full of allusions to the life of the past, while all that suggests Hades is conspicuously absent. At the same time, while this is the clear result of artistic analysis, it is quite impossible to say that the hopes and longings of survivors may not have sometimes found in the mere grouping of a family scene some earnest of re-united family life under other conditions than those of earth. Artistic groups, like strains of music, may be interpreted by the emotions rather than by the intellect, and suggest many things to many people.