It has been sometimes supposed that the temple-like form of these tombs, whence they are called ναἰσκοι, indicates special veneration for those to whom they are erected. If houses in form like those of the gods are given to mortals, surely, it may be said, the mortals are raised almost to the rank of the gods. This view, however, is mistaken. The architectural forms which we associate with Greek temples are not originally peculiar to them. It is only because the temples of Greece have survived the secular buildings that we are disposed to look on pillars and gables as belonging specially to the gods. We have, however, still a few secular Greek buildings, such as the Propylaea of Athens; and we see them to be constructed on similar architectural principles to the temples. The Ionic and Doric styles of architecture were no more exclusively religious in use or origin than was Gothic architecture in England. The ναἰσκοι were not temples, but merely a framing for a domestic interior, such as is often represented on vases. They are rooms of the women’s apartments in Greek houses. A dead lady in the _Anthology_ calls her tomb οἰκία λάϊνα[120]. About contemporary with the introduction of the ναἰσκοι was the custom of shaping the tomb after the fashion of a vase. These stone vases are extremely common in the Museum of Athens. Perhaps the earliest of them is one published by Köhler[121]. In the relief of it we see two men hand in hand, and it bears an inscription which Köhler on epigraphic grounds assigns to the period B.C. 450-430. It is painted like a real Greek vase with palmettes and maeander patterns. It was probably at the time when the custom of placing terra-cotta vases on the tombs was dying out, that it occurred to the sculptors to replace them by making the stele itself in the form of a vase, adorned like the ordinary stelae with inscription and relief. The marble vases were of two kinds. First, we have the lekythos or unguent vase, of the same shape as the red-figured and white ground vases very commonly placed in Athenian graves. These latter are mentioned by Aristophanes[122] as the work of the inferior artist: ὃς τοῖς νεκροῖσι ζωγραφεῖ τὰς ληκύθους, and in another passage he speaks of them as sometimes let into the tomb and fastened there with lead[123]. To imitate them in marble was therefore natural. For an instance of the lekythos tomb see figures 70 to 72, below. In the case of those who died unmarried, a vase of another form was used as the model. Here again we have only an imitation in stone of a terra-cotta vase often placed on the tomb. At Athens it was a custom, when a marriage was about to take place, for a girl to bring to the bride a vessel of water from the spring Callirrhoe for a bridal bath. The water was fetched in a two-handled vessel of peculiar form, the λουτροφόρος, such as seems not to have been used on any other occasion. The Athenian Museum contains