The most recent explanation of the reliefs, first propounded by Milchhoefer, regards them as memorials of the worship, not of the gods, but of the heroized dead. Certainly they in some points nearly resemble the Spartan reliefs, of which we shall treat in the next chapter, and which do beyond doubt belong to the hero-worship of Lacedaemonian families. The offerings, too, in the hands of the votaries, the flower, the fruit, the egg, and the cock, are such as were brought in Greece to the tomb, and such as are figured in the Spartan monuments. No offering could be more appropriately offered to a deceased ancestor, in an artistic representation, than the armour which was sometimes in early days placed, in Greek and Asiatic graves, on the head and the breast of him who had worn it during his life; and in later days was sometimes attached to his tomb. And however we interpret the winged figures, we can hardly make them other than the ministers of death, a fact which seems to strike a keynote with which all the rest of the explanation must harmonize. Yet when we try to explain the sculptures as memorials of Lycian ancestor-worship we soon come to difficulties. On the stelae of Sparta we find a pair, ancestor and ancestress, or the ancestor alone. On Attic tombs we do not find more than a family group. But here, on the monument of Xanthus, there are five detached seated figures, three men and two women. What kind of a group of ancestors will these form, and why are they separate? In the little seated lady of the north side one is tempted, on the analogy of mediaeval paintings, to see the dedicator of the whole tomb. But this again is uncertain. In the whole matter we walk like the Mystae at Eleusis in the dark, seeing only vague forms and hearing words which we cannot interpret. To the winged figures with their prey we may certainly find an analogy in the Sirens of the Athenian monuments (see below, Chap. VIII). The Siren was with the Greeks a sepulchral figure, and signified a death gentle rather than violent. The small beings in their arms on the Xanthian monument are almost certainly souls, which Greek art often represents as of very small size.