Secondly, who and what is the lady who on the reliefs pours wine? Her stature, which is equal to that of the hero himself, and far greater than that of the worshippers, shows at once that she is no living mortal or descendant, but a person of equal rank with the horseman. As a matter of artistic tradition we can trace her genesis quite clearly, as has been well shown by Furtwängler[98]. On the Spartan stelae we found ancestor and ancestress seated side by side. When the reclining position supersedes that of sitting, the wife necessarily moves from her husband’s side and sits opposite to him. It is a variety of the same motive when the husband sits or stands and the wife pours him wine, a group found on several stelae[99], one as early as the Persian wars, and very commonly in the paintings of Greek vases, from quite an early period. The motive of wine-pouring being thus thoroughly established in Greek art, could easily be transferred from one kind of group to another. It may have been that in some cases the hero had no wife, or he may have had several successively: that would make no great difference, as the idea of the group is fixed. As Furtwängler expresses it: ‘Il importe d’insister sur le fait que nous sommes ici en face d’une forme artistique, qui avait pour objet d’exprimer une conception de ces puissances souterraines dérivée d’un des principaux usages de leur culte.’ This is a far more reasonable explanation than that of some writers, who fancy that the wine-pouring lady is a kind of Houri, or nymph of Paradise, who awaits the hero in the next world to recompense him with her embraces for the pains which he has in this world undergone for the good of mankind. Thirdly, what is the relation between these heroic reliefs and the numerous reliefs and paintings on Attic stelae in which the deceased is represented as riding on a horse? Several of these we cite below in Chapter IX. Some points of difference between the two classes of monuments are obvious. The heroic reliefs are broad, shaped like votive tablets: the Attic reliefs are tombstones of upright shape. In the votive reliefs the wine-pouring consort is seldom absent, and votaries are usually present. In the Attic reliefs the horse is merely one of the adjuncts of daily life, and the rider is represented in the guise of his ordinary existence. In fact, as we shall see when we reach the ordinary Attic reliefs, the figure of the horseman, when it occurs on them, is merely a characteristic portrait of a man who in his life had been fond of horses, and perhaps won victories with them at the great sacred festivals.