The effects of the sumptuary laws of Demetrius Phalereus are clearly visible in the Athenian cemeteries. After 300 B.C. we find no more lofty stelae, no more temple-like tombs of great size and beauty. As might be expected from the statement of Cicero above cited, henceforward we find only small and mean monuments, the low stele with reliefs, the stone lekythos, the short pillar, inscribed only with a name. Such tombs are found in extraordinary abundance in the neighbourhood of Athens; but their interest, whether from the point of view of the historian or the artist, is but slight, and we shall be but little concerned with them in these pages. We must imagine most of the roads leading to great cities as flanked on both sides by the sculptured memorials of the dead. Those who have visited Rome and Pompeii will be familiar with this custom, which seems to us rather depressing. But we must remember that the tombs of the Greeks and Romans had not that air of uniform melancholy which tombs bear among us. The frontispiece shows a part of the great Athenian cemetery of the Cerameicus, which lay just outside the Dipylon Gate. It shows us the line of tombs of various ages and of many forms, which flanked the sacred way leading to Eleusis, the line of which is visible in the foreground. On the left is the relief of Dexileos, which belonged to a sort of shrine, of which the foundations still exist. Close to it is a table or τράπεζα; below it, a tall stele with rosettes on the face of it, and surmounted by an acanthus. Then come more tables and a flat stele adorned with reliefs. Further are two shrines, ναΐσκοι, and a lofty basis supporting a bull. One or two short pillars of the later age are visible in the background. In some cases stone lekythi, such as that lying broken at the foot of the pedestal of the bull, were inserted, sometimes one and sometimes two, in the flat upper surface of the tables. To what events this section of the cemetery owes its remarkable preservation is a matter of conjecture. Francis Lenormant suggested that it was covered by the earthen _agger_ set up against the walls of Athens by Sulla when he attacked the city from this side, and so preserved from the ruin which time brings. Dr. Brückner, however, rejects this view, thinking that the spot was buried with earth by the Athenians themselves on some occasion[130]. Whatever explanation be accepted, it is certainly a great gain to us thus to find preserved, like a fly in amber, a section of a great cemetery of Greece. The architectural features and decoration of the tombs of Athens may best be spoken of in this place.