The Lycian Tomb may be dated about the year 420. It owes its name to its
curious form, a form common in Lycia, the cover being set on in the
shape of a Gothic arch. The conjecture has been hazarded that it was
originally made for a Lycian chief and carried off by its Phoenician
proprietor; but for this view there is not much evidence.
[Illustration: FIG. 81. SPHINXES: LYCIAN SARCOPHAGUS.]
The two ends are adorned, with consummate taste and adaptation to space,
with mythic subjects. Above, at one end, are a pair of griffins, at the
other a pair of sphinxes, whose beautiful faces might be those of two
angels of death (Fig. 81). Below are Centaurs in carefully balanced
groups. The sides of the tomb bear reliefs the subjects of which are
taken from daily life, but daily life treated quite generally, and with
a view to the laws of sculptural composition rather than with any
intention to set forth the history of a life. On one side two Amazons,
each in a four-horse chariot and attended by a female charioteer, attack
a lion. On the other side five men on horseback close in upon a boar.
The hunters are all young men of the type of the riders on the frieze of
the Parthenon, to some of whom in fact they bear a very close
resemblance. But the chariot used for lion-hunting savours rather of
Assyria than of Greece. The reliefs were fully coloured, such
accessories as reins and spears being filled in in metal.
As the Lycian Tomb carries an echo of the style of Pheidias, so the Tomb
of the Mourning Women reminds us at once of the works of the second
Attic school, and of Praxiteles in particular. We should date it about
B.C. 370 or 360. I can only describe in detail the scenes of the one end
of it which is selected for the illustration; of the rest of the
sculptured reliefs a very summary description must suffice. Never was
there a work of art in which death and mourning were represented in so
varied and so exquisitely subdued a fashion. The sarcophagus is like an
artistic lament, written in many verses, and composed in different keys,
but still constantly returning to and hovering about the loss of some
dignified and much-regretted person. In the engraving (Fig. 82) we see
at the top two corresponding groups, in each of which is a bearded man
seated in an attitude of dejection, while a younger man standing before
him holds discourse with him. The subject of which he speaks is, we can
scarcely doubt, the death of the ruler who was the master and protector
of both, and whose departure causes widely spread sorrow in the land.
Just below, in the gable, are three seated women, who also seem to talk
on the same theme. They remind us of a fine passage in the dirge
pronounced by David over Saul and Jonathan[320], ‘Ye daughters of
Israel, weep over Saul, who
[Illustration: FIG. 82. SARCOPHAGUS OF MOURNERS: END.]
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