Thus when we see on our reliefs a lady holding out empty hands (cf. Pl. XXVI), we may be sure that originally those hands had borne a necklace or other jewelry, added in colour. The handles of the marriage vase on Pl. IV must have been marked with colour. The ornaments of the helmet of Aristonautes (Pl. XI) were added in metal, and so on in other cases. To the modern eye the pure white of Greek reliefs as they now are, seems classical and appropriate. And we may be right. Greek life has passed away, and looks upon us as if from another world in the ghostly reflection of Greek art. We see it not in a realistic but in a softened and ideal light. But the Greeks themselves loved strong colour, and in any purely artistic question their eyes are far more to be trusted than ours, which are perverted by the ugly surroundings of our daily life. The date of Greek sepulchral monuments may be determined by a variety of considerations. The inscriptions which they bear may help us in some cases. We know that the old Attic alphabet, which did not distinguish short from long vowels, confusing O with Ω, and E with H, and which used the form [**shape] for Λ and Λ for Γ, was officially superseded by the alphabet of Asia Minor in the archonship of Euclides 403 B.C. But long before this date the Ionian letters had been in frequent use for private documents. Thus any tomb bearing an inscription in the Ionian character can scarcely be later than 400 B.C.; but may be considerably earlier. The evidence of date furnished by inscriptions being thus rather vague, we return to the evidence offered by the forms of the stelae and the style of the reliefs. A certain roughness and want of elaboration in the acroteria, the architectural adornments of the tops of the stelae, indicates fifth-century work. For example, the stelae of Lysander (Pl. XX) and of Mica (Pl. XXI), with their somewhat clumsy ending above, are typical of the fifth century, while a somewhat more elegant top, as in the stele of Damasistrata (Pl. XXIII), is usually an indication of the more luxurious fourth century. But style of sculpture is a safer criterion. Those who are familiar with the style of the Parthenon frieze, and with that of Praxitelean art, will find little difficulty in determining to which of these two very different styles that of any given relief most closely approximates. To the question of the relation of sepulchral reliefs to the works of the great Athenian artists we will return in a later chapter (XI).