Επιτύμβια στήλη από το Αιγάλεω
Part of : Εγνατία ; No.8, 2004, pages 171-201
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171-201
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A grave stele from Aigaleo
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Μελέτες
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Abstract:
The naiskos-shaped grave stele in the Piraeus Archaeological Museum inv. no. 3327 (pis. 1-8. Clairmont, CAT, no. 3.451a) was found in 1973 at 41 Heptanisou Street in the Hayia Varvara district of Aigaleo. The relief representation on the stele is of high artistic quality and is particularly interesting from an iconographie point of view.The inscription engraved on the epistyle (Άκταΐος Πεψα[ιεύς. -----Ά]κταίο Πεφαιέως) is well known to scholars. There is a group of three figures on the stele. In the middle, a woman wearing a sleeved chiton and himation is seated on a stool; she is turned to the left and raises her right hand to her cheek, touching it with her fingertips. This gesture, a characteristic indication of grief and mourning, is in keeping with the unwordly expression on her face; she was the wife or daughter of Aktaios from the deme of the Piraeus, the bearded man standing before her with his head bowed. Aktaios, leaning on his staff with both hands, is completely enveloped from head to foot in a himation. On the right side of the stele, the young maidservant holding the jewellery box seems to be gazing at Aktaios.This relief composition is a work from the beginning of the 2nd quarter of the 4th c. BC (circa 375-365 BC), and in the structure, the organisation of the figures in space and in their bearing it recalls the representation on the funerary naiskos of Demoteles, son of Thymokles, from the deme of Prasiai, and members of his family in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. no. 11.100.2 (Clairmont, CAT, no. 3.846), of the same period.The dead, for whom the stele was erected, is the seated woman. The inscription on the epistyle, however, with the names of both the principal figures in the composition implies that Aktaios was also dead. The depiction of a male figure with his himation pulled over his head is very rare in funerary reliefs, although this is not the first time that it appears on our stele. The elderly Hermosthenes, as raising his left hand to his head in a sign of grief, is depicted in a similar manner on the lekythos from the beginning of the 4th c. BC in the Pergamon-Museum in Berlin, inv. no. 1107 (Clairmont, CAT, no. 3.221). In all probability the covering of his head by Aktaios is not only a reference to his advanced years, but is also used to denote mourning. Consequently Aktaios would have been the first in the family to die, followed by his wife or daughter, who is the principal person in the scene on the stele. The grief of the woman is for her husband or father and is not connected with her own fate. Among the funerary reliefs of the Classical period there is no lack of instances in which the dead person is depicted together with other already dead members of his family. For example, on the stele in the Piraeus Archaeological Museum, inv. no 228 (pis. 9-10), Aristodike, for whom the stele was erected, is depicted with her already dead husband, Proxenides, and her already deceased daughter, Menippe. On the stele in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, inv. no. 3966 (pi. 12), with the engraved names of both the principal figures on the epistyle, the deceased for whom the stele was erected is the seated woman. Standing facing her are her husband and a mourning relative in the background. That the death of her husband preceded her own is indicated by the grieving gesture of the seated woman, as on the Aigaleo stele. A typical example of grief displayed for a dead person with the same gesture is to be found on a stele in the British School of Archaeology at Athens (C. E. Edgar, JHS 17 (1897) 175, pi. IV. 2). Without doubt this stele was erected for the standing figure now missing from the left part, for whom the seated woman on the first level expresses her grief.The above casts light on the meaning of the scene on the splendid funerary naiskos of Demoteles and members of his family in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, inv. no. 11.100.2 (Clairmont, CAT, no. 3.846), along with the loutrophoros-hydria (Clairmont, CAT, no. 3.319) and the lekythos (Clairmont, CAT, no. 4.850), which have been attributed to the same burial peribolos. The loutrophoros-hydria was erected for the unmarried Malthake, who is depicted together with her father Demoteles and her elder sister Demokrateia. The funerary naiskos was erected for Demoteles, who is shown together with his already deceased daughter Malthake standing before him in an attitude of grief and his elder married daughter, Demokrateia, who holds her little daughter's hand while she looks at her dead sister Malthake. The lekythos was erected for Demokrateia, who died after the birth of the second child and is depicted together with her already dead father, Demoteles, and her already dead younger sister, Malthake.
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