Note (return) — THE TEMPLE ON THE ACROPOLIS BURNT BY THE PERSIANS.

If ceramic art really did exert such an influence on temple-sculpture, we should be able to trace analogies in other lines. The most interesting is found in the design and execution of sepulchral monuments. Milchhoefer 58 is of the opinion that the tomb was not originally marked by an upright slab with sculptured figures. He finds what he thinks the oldest representation of sepulchral ornament in a black-figured vase of the so-called "prothesis" class. 59 Here are two women weeping about a sepulchral mound on which rests an amphora of like form to the one that bears the scene. He maintains then that such a prothesis vase was the first sepulchral monument, that this was later replaced by a vase of the same description in marble, of course on account of the fragile nature of pottery. For this reason, too, we find no certain proof of the fact in the old tombs, though Dr. Wolters 60 thinks that the discovery of fragments of vases on undisturbed tombs makes the case a very strong one. The use of such vases or urns of marble for this purpose became very prevalent. They are nearly always without ornament, save for a single small group, in relief or sometimes in color, representing the dead and the bereaved ones. A very evident connecting-link between these urns and the later sepulchral stele appears in monuments which show just such urns projected in relief upon a plane surface. The relief is sometimes bounded by the outlines of the urn itself, 61 sometimes a surrounding background is indicated. In many cases this background assumes the form of the ordinary sepulchral stele. The Central Museum at Athens is especially rich in examples of this kind. On two steles which I have noticed there, three urns are represented side by side. A still more interesting specimen is a stone so divided that its lower part is occupied by an urn in relief, above which is sculptured the usual scene of parting. This scene has its normal place as a relief or a drawing in color on the surface of the urn itself; here, where the step in advance of choosing the plane stele to bear the relief seems already taken, the strength of tradition still asserts itself, and a similar group is repeated on the rounded face of the urn below. The transition to the more common form of sepulchral monument has now become easy; but the characteristics which point to its genesis in the funeral vase are still prominent.