The earliest sepulchral monuments which reach us from Attica, setting aside the merely decorative or symbolical sphinx, are portraits of the dead. In these portraits there is something of artistic and something of religious purpose. As we shall presently see, no hard and fast line can be drawn between the image used in ancestor-worship and the portrait which is merely a memorial. In fact we may see two lines of tendency taking their rise in the mere image of the dead. The one tendency is to bring it nearer to the images of the gods; to identify the departed ancestor or friend with Hades, the ruler of the world of shades. The other tendency is to render the portrait a characteristic memorial of the life which is past. In almost all existing sculptural remains we may see something of both tendencies, and it is by no means easy to determine what features in them properly belong to the past life, and what features to the life which begins with death. At Sparta, as we have seen, there is almost no reference to the past. In Lycia, past and future are closely blended. At Athens, and in several districts of Greece, the past has a tendency to eclipse the future. Yet at least in the earlier stelae the religious, the human, and the artistic are all actively working elements. From the middle of the sixth century onwards the custom prevailed of placing upon the tomb a portrait of the occupant, who is represented in characteristic attitude and employment[155]. A man in middle life is commonly represented in arms; a youth appears as an athlete holding strigil or discus. A married woman appears with the basket of wool, which signifies her most usual employment to be spinning; a young girl carries a doll, or plays with a pet bird or dog. Sometimes this portrait is sculptured in the round; sometimes it appears in relief, on a larger or a smaller scale.