It is most probable that this tomb contained the remains of a king mentioned in history. About 350 B.C. Sidon had revolted against Persia under Artaxerxes Ochus, and the revolt had been mercilessly suppressed by the Persian king. As a natural result, the city regarded Alexander, when in his victorious course he reached Sidon, as a deliverer rather than as a foe. While Tyre resisted to the death, Sidon yielded at once. A King Strato was then ruling. For reasons of his own Alexander directed Hephaestion to depose him, and to set up in his place a member of the royal house named Abdalonymus. The latter, however, did not reign very long, as after this Phoenicia became a bone of contention between the Ptolemies and the Seleucidae. It seems a fair historical conjecture that the great sarcophagus is that of Abdalonymus, who seems to have been the last of the native royal race, and who records on his tomb alike his own exploits and those of his hero and protector Alexander. The beauty of the whole sarcophagus cannot be judged from our representations, few in number and small in size. To be appreciated fully, the great monument must be seen in its place in the Museum at Constantinople: its beauty and preservation are alike overpowering. Much of the colouring still remains[326], but the accessories, swords, bits of horses, and the like, once filled in in bronze and silver, have disappeared. The style is a style of wonderful vigour of grouping and skill in execution. Altogether it is one of the world’s masterpieces. The artistic school of this great work of art remains yet to be determined. The names of Eutychides and Euthycrates, great sculptors of the end of the fourth century, have been suggested. But the truth is that in this sarcophagus we are face to face with a work of a character quite new to us, in some ways a more masterly work of the Greek chisel than we had before possessed. Hitherto we had been able to divide Greek reliefs into high relief, half relief, and bas relief. But the artist of these friezes mixes all these styles, in order to produce the desired effect, with masterful boldness. We must wait until time and fresh discoveries enable us to determine his artistic genealogy. The nearest of Greek sarcophagi in date and style to the last of the Sidonian series is the great Amazon sarcophagus of Vienna[327], an admirable work of art, on the four sides of which are depicted with much spirit the battles of the Greeks and Amazons. But we have here regular mythologic scenes like those which adorn the great temples of Greece; nothing personal, and nothing which has reference to the future world. Any further consideration of Greek sarcophagi and of the Roman sarcophagi which succeeded them would take us into another province of the great empire of Hellenic antiquity. THE END OXFORD: HORACE HART PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY FOOTNOTES: [1] I. 28. 36: ‘Iniecto ter pulvere curras.’ [2] Benndorf, _Griech. und Sicil. Vasenbilder_, pl. i.