2. Commemorative tablets. These may readily be distinguished in form, because their width is greater than their height, whereas in the true grave-stele, the height is greater than the width. They were made usually not to be fixed into the ground of the cemetery, but to be set up in chapels or mounted on walls in its neighbourhood. An example will be found in Pl. III. These slabs have a closer relation to actual cultus than have the gravestones. Their likeness in shape and in composition to tablets dedicated to the deities is obvious. In fact they belonged to the chapels and shrines sacred to the worship of heroes and exalted ancestors, rather than to the ordinary dead. When we proceed to trace down the lines of descent of the memorials of ancestor-worship from Sparta in various districts of Greece, we shall find that some of these lines lead us to groups of actual tombstones, but more usually they lead to dedicatory reliefs, closely connected with the cultus of the dead, but not usually coming from actual cemeteries. One line takes us to the so-called sepulchral banquets of Athens. The best specimen of these reliefs, found at the Piraeus, and dating from the end of the fifth century, is represented in our plates (Pl. III). It has passed by the absurd name, The Death of Socrates. On a couch, supported by cushions, reclines a bearded citizen, holding in his hand a cup, and apparently pouring the libation with which the Greeks preluded their feasts. At his feet sits his wife, occupied, like many of the ladies represented on Athenian tombs, in admiring a necklace, which she holds in both hands, or possibly a wreath, for the object itself, having been represented in colour and not in the marble, has disappeared. A young slave as cup-bearer is occupied in fetching wine in a jug from the huge _crater_ or mixing bowl which appears on the left of the relief; beneath the couch a dog is occupied with a bone. On the right of the scene there enters a bearded man, of smaller stature than the reclining hero, who raises his hand out of the folds of his himation in a fashion which to the Greeks implied adoration. At the first glance there seems but small likeness between this scene of domestic feasting and the stiff Spartan reliefs. Yet when we compare the two in detail, we find that the differences between them lie in the different customs of varying ages, and in the artistic rendering, rather than in the signification. Let us make the comparison. In the Spartan relief the hero is seated, in the Athenian reclining. Here we have an illustration of the well-known fact that during the historic age the Greeks changed their custom from sitting at meals, as do the Homeric heroes, for a reclining posture. The habit of lying at meals, awkward as it seems to us, was a result of growing luxury. It had long, as we know from the reliefs of the Assyrian palaces, been customary in the East. Fig. 32[83] shows King Assur-bani-pal and his Queen [Illustration: