Note 105 — Chapter V · THE CULT OF SOULS

The reliefs represent a man enthroned, sometimes alone, sometimes with a woman beside him, stretching out a kantharos to receive the offerings. As a rule he is approached by a group of worshippers represented on a smaller scale. The earliest examples of these reliefs were found in Sparta and go back to the sixth century. Since the investigations of Milchhöfer especially, they are now generally recognised as representing the family worship of the dead. They are the forerunners of the representations of similar food-offerings in which (following later custom) the Hero is lying on a kline and receiving his worshippers. (That this class of reliefs representing “banquets of the dead” was also sacrificial in character is proved clearly by the presence of the worshippers who in many cases lead sacrificial victims. H. v. Fritze in Ath. Mitt. ’96, p. 347 ff., supposes that they are intended to represent not sacrifices but the συμπόσιον which the dead person is to enjoy in the after life. But he can only account for the presence of the worshippers in such a forced and unnatural way [p. 356 ff.], that this alone seems to refute his theory. πυραμίδες and incense among the offerings made do not by any means contradict its nature as a sacrifice to the dead.) The same is the meaning of the reliefs found esp. in Boeotia in which the person worshipped is seated on a horse, or leading a horse, and accepting offerings (summary by Wolters, Archäol. Zeitung, 1882, p. 299 ff.; cf. also Gardner, JHS. 1884, pp. 107–42; Furtwängler, Samml. Sab. i, p. 23). The worshippers bring pomegranates, a cock (e.g. Ath. Mitt. ii, Pl. 20–2), a pig (cock and pig on Theban relief: A. Mitt. iii, 377; pig on Boeotian rel.: A. Mitt. iv, Pl. 17, 2), a ram (rel. from Patras: A. Mitt. iv, 125 f.; cf. the ram’s head on a grave monument from the neighbourhood of Argos, A. Mitt. viii, 141). All these gifts are of the kind proper to the underworld. We know the pomegranate as food of the χθόνιοι from the Hymn to Demeter; the pig and ram are the main constituents of sacrifice made to the χθόνιοι and burnt in cathartic or hilastic (propitiatory) ceremonial. In such cases the cock, of course, does not appear because it was sacred to Helios and Selene (cf. D.L. viii, 34; Iamb., VP. 84), but because it was a sacrificial animal of the χθόνιοι (and of Asklepios) and for the same reason much used in necromancy, spirit-raising, and magic [Dieterich, Pap. mag. 185, 3]. As such it was forbidden food to the Mystai of Demeter at Eleusis: Porph., Abs. 4, 16, p. 255, 5 N. Sch. Luc., D. Me. 7, 4, p. 280, 23 Rabe—Anyone who partakes of the food of the underworld spirits is forfeit to them. On their side the reclining or enthroned spirits of the dead on these reliefs are brought into conjunction with a snake (A. Mitt. ii, Pl. 20–2; viii, Pl. 18, 1, etc.), a dog, or a horse (sometimes a horse’s head only occurs). The snake is the well-known symbol of the Hero: the dog and the horse certainly do not represent victims as Gardner, p. 131, thinks—their real meaning has not yet been made out. The horse occurs sometimes by the side of women and therefore can hardly symbolize a knight’s status. I regard it as also a symbol of the departed as now having entered the spirit-world, like the snake too (Grimm understands it differently: p. 841 f., 844). I can form no decided opinion as to the dog: it is not likely to be mere genre—any more than anything else in these sculptures.