In Death Not Divided - Department of Art History

In Death Not Divided: Gender, Family, and State on Classical Athenian Grave
Stelae
Ruth E. Leader
American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 101, No. 4. (Oct., 1997), pp. 683-699.
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684
RUTH E. LEADER
[AJA 101
T h e grave stelae of the later fifth and fourth cen.
turies B.C. represent one of a succession of different
funerark monument tkpes used by the Athenians
since Early Archaic times.' Here I shall concentrate
less on the diachronic aspects of visual commem.
oration of the dead in Athens, and more on the syn.
chronic aspects of the Classical figured stele, that
is, its relationship R ith other forms of visual culture
in the Classical period. Nevertheless, a brief history
of funerary sculpture in Attica is perhaps useful at
this point. While sculpted stone funerary monuments
had been in use during the Archaic period in the
cemeteries of Attica, these had disappeared by
the beginning of the fifth century, ;,$hich is usual]\
interpreted as the result of sumptuary legislation
passed in connection with the beginnings of democ.
racy in Athens."~ relaxation or repeal of such leg.
islation during the course of the fifth century is attested in o u r literary sources; the archaeological
record, however, reveals a reappearance of stone fu.
nerary sculpture a decade o r so after the middle of
the fifth century (ca. 440-430 B.C.).' The reasons for
and the precise date of the emergence of the Classical grave stele are much debated.* Most of this
controversy does not bear directly on the themes of
this article, but one point is worth stressing: the
figured relief stelae that became popular in the lat.
ter decades of the fifth century differed from their
Archaic predecessors both in form and in the way
that they commemorated their subjects. This may
well explain their development in democratic Athens, despite any existing legislation against largescale funerary monuments. I will return shortly to
the character of the commemoration offered by Classical grave stelae, but first let us take a closer look
at the space where they were set up, as this factor
is rarely explicitly examined.
The cemeteries of Athens were located outside
the city, and although rural cemeteries in the countryside of Attica did exist, it is those cemeteries directly outside the walls of Athens that have received
the most intensive archaeological investigation.
These were situated near gates, and the roads that
led u p to these gates often ran through the ceme.
teries, with graves facing the roads.%rave stelae, in
that they were set u p in cemeteries by individuals
"ideologi.
4 In this paper the terms "ideal," "~deology,"
'
cal," and "idealize" will be used in opposition to "actual"
a n d "real." hly intention in doing so is to express the function of images in a culture to present and promote desirable social norms a n d values that may exist only imper.
fectly in that culture. In the past there has been a tendency
to interpret images oft'everyday life" in Classical art as ran.
d o m snapshots of daily occurrences. hlore recently there
have been significant departures from this attitude, which
stress the deployment of images by the Classical Greeks
to articulate social structures and prescribe norms, and
I follow such approaches here. For a fuller discussion of
the mechanics of construction of social norms o r ideals
through images, see hl. Beard, "Adopting an Approach 11,"
in T. Rasmussen and h'. Spivey eds., Looking at Greek Vases
(Cambridge 1991) 12-35; C. Sourvinou.Inwood, "Reading"
Greek Death: To the End of the Classical Period (Oxford 1995)
528-37; a n d K. Stears, Women and the Family in the Funerary
Ritual and Art of Classical Athens (Diss. King's College, Lond o n 1993) 323-49, an excerpt from which is published as
"Dead U'omen's Society: Constructing Female Gender in
Classical Athenian Funerary Sculpture," in N. Spencer ed.,
Time, Tradition and Society in Greek Archaeology: Bridging the
"Great Divide" (London 1995) 109-31.
T h e classic corpus, A. Conze's Die attischen Grabreliefs
(Berlin 1893-1922), has recently been updated by C.
Clairmont's CAT, to which I refer for individual examples
throughout this paper.
T h e evidence for this legislation is a rather vague pas.
sage of Cicero (Leg. 2.26.64), and is discussed in D.C. Kurtz
and J. Boardman, Greek Burial Customs (London 1971) 121;
hl. Robertson, A History ofGreek Art (Cambridge 1975) 197,
363-64,649 n. 73; a n d Clairmont 11. For a dissenting view,
see I. h'iorris "Law, Culture a n d Funerary Art in Athens
600-300 B.C.," Hephaistos 11-12 (1992-1993) 38-44.
7 As well as the figured relief stelae that are the subject
of this paper, plain and painted stelae, marble loutrophoroi, and stone animals are also found. See Kurtz and Board.
man (supra n. 6) 121-36. For types of Archaic funerary
monuments, see G.hI.A. Richter, The Archaic Gravestones of
Attica (London 1961).
Supra n. 6; also R. Osborne, "Funerary h~ionuments,
the Democratic Citizen and the Representation ofUTomen:'
in hl. Sakellariou ed., Athenian Democracy and Culture (forthcoming); H.A. Shapiro, "The Iconography of hlourning in
Athenian Art,"AJA 95 (1991) 630-31,647; a n d Stears 1993
(supra n. 4) 268-98, who proposes the early date of ca.
450 B.C. for the first Classical stelae, although stressing
that these were not produced in any great numbers until
the e n d of the fifth century.
W u r t z and Boardman (supra n. 6) 91-96; R.E. Wycherley, The Stones of Athens (Princeton 1978) 253-60.
they allow a subtle examination of the variety of
different ways gender was constructed visually in
Athenian society. The anthropological identification
of death as a "rite d e passage" can help us here to
understand the ideological component of these fu.
nerary images. Death is a time of tension and crisis,
in which social values may seem to be threatened.
Retrospective funerary art becomes an opportunity
to articulate the society's ideals of life, acting as a
memorial both in images and in words (epitaphs)
not so much of the deceased's individual life, but
of an ideal and an ideology of social living in fifth.
and fourth.centur)- Athens.-'
"PRIVATE" AND "PUBLIC" IN CLASSICAL ATHENIAN
FUNERARY ART
19971
IN DEATH NOT DIVIDED
685
to commemorate other individuals from their own
family, were private monuments. By the word "pri.
vate" here, I mean simply that they were not civic
(i.e., "public") commemorations erected at the expense of the Athenian state, like, for example, the
statues of the Tyrannicides in the Agora.Io But par.
adoxically, the Athenian cemetery complicated the
familial status of such stelae by exposing them to
a much less exclusive spectatorship. T h e location of
the cemeteries at the gates of the city means that
grave stelae were set u p in a space accessible to a
very broad audience, as they were visible to those
entering and leaving the city, in all types of circumstances, from personal business to state processions.
Some epitaphs specifically address themselves to
passersby, though this is more common in the Ar~ ~ many Athe.
chaic period than the C l a ~ s i c a l .For
nian viewers, however, the space of the cemetery
would have been encountered most often at times
of burial and the annual commemoration of the
dead, the Genesia." Both of these rites were performed by individual families, o r oikoi, for their own
dead, and were therefore arguably private, noncivic
actions, in the same sense as the erection of grave
stelae.
Though not necessarily the most typical, the Ker.
ameikos cemetery was the most important Athenian
cemetery and the o n e for which we have the most
archaeological and literary evidence.'" It also raises
the most questions about the role of the individual
a n d the state in the space of the cemetery, since this
is where the state tombs of the war dead were erected,
a n d the accompanying funeral oration was given.
T h e description of the Kerameikos in the second
century by Pausanias gives some indication of the
character of this cemetery, albeit biased toward
Pausanias's twin interests in religious sites and the
Greek past. H e first describes a number of shrines,
to Artemis, Dionysos Eleuthereus, and Hecate, which
were located in the area of the Kerameikos, but his
description does not imply that these were connected
point highlights for
with the cult of the dead.'"his
us an important difference between these sanctuaries in the Kerameikos a n d the traditional Chris.
tian churchyard: the Kerameikos as an area is not
a sacred space-unlike the precincts of Greek
temples-and the shrines there have no clear relation to its function as a burial ground,
while the
churchyard is a consecrated space attached to a
church, echoing the centrality of life after death in
Christianity. After describing the sanctuaries, Pau.
sanias goes on to describe the graves, emphasizing
through his focus on the graves of the war dead and
other famous men the highly visible involvement
of the Athenian polis in the Kerameikos.li Graves
of undistinguished private individuals receive n o
mention,lh although these must have been in the
majority, as well as being conspicuous, since from
the e n d of the fifth century the\ \$ere laid out in
terraces, which Mere often ~ a l l e dwith fine ashlar
masonry, on top of which the stele was placed.li The
terraces (which contrast ~ i t the
h Archaic and Geo.
metric tumuli on which earlier markers were placed)
would seem to have been designed to ensure the vis.
1') It is possible to find analogies in Classical Athenian
society to the 19th.century formulation of the categories
of "public" and "private," the closest of these being the dichotomy between the state (polis) and the family (oikos).
But it should be stressed that this is a n analogy rather than
a correspondence: the category of "polis" is not identical
to that of "public," nor that of "oikos" to "private," espe.
cially in locating the boundary between the two categories.
And just as the privatelpublic dichotomy has developed
through more modern times, the oikoslpolis dichotomy
was also not static in ancient Greece. For more o n this complex and often problematic relationship between the an.
cient and modern concepts, see Humphreys (supra n. 3)
22-32; J:P. Vernant, A4ortals and Immortals: Collected Essays
(Princeton 1991) 323-24; and C. Sourvinou.Inwood, "hlale
a n d Female, Public a n d Private, Ancient a n d Modern," in
E. Reeder ed., Pandora: Momen in Classical Greece (Baltimore
1995) 111-20. For definitions of "polis" a n d "oikos" in fifth.
century B.C. Athens a n d their opposition, see S. Goldhill,
Reading Greek Tragedy (Cambridge 1986) 69, 73, 114.
Tivo examples from the Classical period, both from
male graves, are represented by IG 112,10435 = CAT 2.458
and IG 112,879, 542la = CAT 5.450.
l 2 O n the Genesia and other commemorative festivals
of the dead, see Humphreys (supra n. 3) 87; R. Garland,
The Greek Way of Death (London 1985) 104-105; and H.W7.
Parke, Festivals of the Athenians (London 1977) 53-54.
1" U. Knigge, Der Kerameikos won Athen (Athens 1988) provides a detailed guide to the excavation site, a n d Wycherley (supra n. 9) 253-60 is useful for his discussion of the
structures and character of the Kerameikos.
I V a u s . 1.29.2. T h e cult of the dead was addressed to
the tombs themselves, see Kurtz and Boardman (supra n. 6)
100-105; Garland (supra n. 12) 110-20: U7.Burkert, Greek
Re1igion:Archaicand Classical (Oxford 1985) 190-94, 199-203.
15 Paus. 1.29.3-16.
l".A. hleyer points o u t that private monuments interspersed with the public ones may have misled Pausanias,
when he incorrectly claims that the graves of the war dead
listed "the names and deme of each": hleyer, "Epitaphs and
Citizenship in Classical Athens," JHS 113 (1993) 119.
li hleyer (supra n. 16) 118 has suggested that this re.
structuring of the areas for private burial in the Keramei.
kos should be seen in the context of sociopolitical "restruc.
turing" in Athens after the disruption of the reign of the
Thirty, supporting her argument by noting the prominence
assigned to the tomb of Thrasyboulos, the leader of the
revolt against the Thirty, in Pausanias's description of
the tombs of the Kerameikos.
686
RUTH E. LEADER
[AJA 101
ibility of this new type of monument in a semiarchitectural setting.
T h e Kerameikos cemetery thus was a space where
the Athenian state's involvement in the death, as well
as the life, of the citizen was highly visible. It had,
therefore, a civic character akin to that of the Agora
o r Acropolis, which was seemingly at variance with
the family rites of burial and commemoration that
also took place there. Can Classical grave stelae be
described as a private art form when they are erected
in a civic setting? Although comparisons can be made
between stelae and religious dedications in sanctu.
aries (such as the Acropolis), which were also monuments erected by individuals in a civic space, the
relationship between the individual and the deity
to whom the dedication is made is rather different
from the relationship of those setting u p a grave stele
to their dead, since gods in sanctuaries are shared
by all citizens, but each individual has his o r her own
dead.Ix Classical grave stelae have often been com.
pared with fifth-centuryAthenian architectural sculp.
ture, above all the Parthenon frieze, from a stylistic
rather than a functional point of view, with some
scholars arguing that they were carved by the same
scu1ptors.l" Although this approach can help us to
understand the range of Athenian artistic production in the fifth and fourth centuries, it obscures the
functional differences between grave stelae and such
unambiguously public art, erected by the state in
a religious space, a n d serving a joint religious a n d
civic function, whose imagery glorifies the state
a n d the individual's place within the state.20 Only
the last of these functions (glorifying the individual's
position within the state) can be asserted for stelae,
while the claim for grave stelae as a noncivic art of
the oikos can be supported through a comparison
with the red-figure painted pottery of fifth- a n d
fourth.century Athens, which arguably also belongs
in the category of domestic art through its commis.
sion, ownership, and function.21
Although a variety of types of Athenian pottery
were used as tomb offerings (some, but not all, of
which were produced specially for that purpose),
I concentrate here on iconographic comparisons
between nonfunerary pottery and grave stelae, since
in both, images of domestic life are represented,
a n d gender issues figure.22 In effect, both vases and
stelae use the sphere of the domestic to construct
prescriptive social norms o r ideals. A number of
red-figure vases produced shortly after 450 B.C. de.
pict women in so.called "scenes of everyday life:' using
images similar to those found on stelae.27In com.
paring the name.pot hydria of the Painter of BM E215
(fig. 1)with some frequently occurring iconographic
types of stelae (figs. 2-3), we can see that they share
several main visual elements in common - the seated
woman, the standing mature bearded man, and the
attendant maid with a chest. The complete scene on
the vase is not replicated on the stelae, but rather
broken u p and reduced to smaller groups - seated
woman and maid on the stele of Hegeso (fig. 2), stand.
ing man and seated woman on the stele of Ktesileos
and Theano (fig. 3)-which suggests that these individual elements might represent stereotypes of
man, woman, and maid, rather than the narrative
images of individuals, which the modern viewer may
be tempted to read in them. In this case, the func.
tion of such visual images goes beyond that of "il.
lustration," which the genre term "everyday life" may
suggest, to construct idealizing norms of domestic
life.24This point becomes clearer in the next section, where I discuss the nature of the male and fe.
1".
h'lorris, "Everyman's Grave," in A. Boegehold and
A. Scafuro eds., Athenian Identity and Civic Ideology (Baltimore 1994)70-71 discusses private spending in public contexts before the 430s B.C.
1Wobertson (supra n. 6 ) 363-64. This claim has been
questioned by R. Osborne in "The Viewing and Obscuring
o f the Parthenon Frieze,"JHS 107 (1987) 105.
" ' O n the imagery o f the Acropolis sculptures, see D.
Castriota, Myth, Ethos and Actuality: Oficial Art in FifthCentu?
B.C. Athens (hladison 1992).
In this context Vickers and Gill's theory that Attic
painted pottery was an inexpensive imitation o f gold and sil.
ver tableware should be noted. I f they are right, metalwork
was another form o f private art in Athens. See hl. Vickers
and D. Gill,Artful Crafts: Ancient Greek Silverware and Pottery
(Oxford 1994); and D. Williams, "Refiguring Attic Red.
Figure: A Review Article," R A 1996,227-52 for a refutation
o f their claims.
"For vessels used as tomb offerings, see Kurtz and
Boardman (supra n . 6 ) 100-105. Shapiro (supra n . 8 ) pro.
vides a survey o f funerary iconography on painted pottery.
For discussion o f pottery as grave goods in the context o f
Vickers and Gill'sargument, see hlorris (supran. 2) 108-18.
2" The largest group comprises those works attributed
to the Washing Painter (ARV' 1126-33); other notable
painters o f that period producing similar images are the
Achilles Painter (ARV2 986-1001) and the Sabouroff
Painter (ARV' 837-51), both o f whom work in the specifically funerary medium o f white-ground lekythoi. Tivo
usefui studies o f pots representing aspects o f women's life
in Classical Athens are D. U'illiams, "U70menon Athenian
Vases: Problems o f Interpretation," in A. Cameron and A.
Kuhrt eds., Images of Women in Antiquity (London 1983)
92-106; and J . Reilly, "hlany Brides: 'hlistress and hlaid' on
Athenian Lekythoi," Hesperia 58 (1989) 411-44.
24 This function o f vase painting i s explored more fully
in Beard (supra n. 4).
"
19971
IN DEATH NOT DIVIDED
687
Fig. 1. Attic red.figure hydria, Painter of BM E215, third quarter of fifth century B.C.
London, British Museum E215. (Courtesy Trustees of the British Museum)
male stereotypes that the stelae represent. It should
be noted, however, that representations of women's
domestic life on vases predate those on stelae by
about 20 years; by the time these stelae were being
produced in large numbers in the last couple of decades of the fifth century, such scenes were no longer
popular on vases, having been replaced by the more
mythologized versions of women's life favored by such
artists as the Eretria Painter and the Meidias
Painter.25
The ideological deployment of a common visual
repertoire of the domestic is an important link between vases and stelae. At the same time it is impor-
tant to be aware of the differences of cost, scale,
and function between vases and stelae. The stone and
workmanship required to produce a stele meant that
stelae would be available to a much smaller group
of people than those who could afford to buy redfigure pottery, which was probably relatively inexpensive.26 The images on stelae are more specific
than the images on vases since, although the latter
construct gender stereotypes, they do not commernorate any one individual or group of individuals
through them. Moreover, once carved, the stele becomes a fixed monument in the cemetery outdoors,
while painted pottery is portable, enabling it to be
25 These developments are well described in M. Robertson, The Art of Vase Painting in Classical Athens (Cambridge
1993) 191-242. See also L. Burn, The Meidias Painter (Oxford 1987).
26For the cost of grave stelae, see T.H. Nielsen e t al.,
"Athenian Grave Monuments and Social Class," GRBS 30
(1989) 411-20. The figured naiskos stelae were the most
expensive type of Classical grave monuments. For the cost
of painted pottery, see Vickers and Gill (supra n. 21) 85-92,
and the opposing view of Williams (supra n. 21) 227-31.
688
RUTH E. LEADER
[AJA 101
Fig. 2. Stele of Hegeso, first quarter of fourth century B.C.Athens, National Museum 3624.
(Courtesy Deutsches Archaologisches Institut, Athens)
used in different domestic contexts, as well as outside the household. At the same time, the prominent display of a dedicated stele meant that it was
much more available to be viewed than the average
pot. But although the medium, context, and style
of stelae associate them with civic art, their iconography and its prescriptive force in presenting visually ideal gender roles in domestic contexts associate them with the visual sphere of the oikos. Thus,
conceptually they are situated between sculpture
erected by the Athenian state and the art of the
Athenian household, between civic and domestic,
public and private. It could be argued, therefore, that
they occupied a liminal position that complicated
and confused the divisions between such polarities.
Does the position of the stelae between the spheres
of polis and oikos have implications for the way that
the images on the stelae construct gender? To answer
this question requires an analysis of such images,
which occupies the following two sections.
19971
IN DEATH NOT DIVIDED
689
DEATH AND GENDER
Fig. 3. Stele of Ktesileos and Theano, ca. 370 B.C. Athens,
National Museum 3472. (Courtesy Ashmole Archive)
To consider the visual constructions of gender in
funerary imagery is to look at the way a person's identity while living was constructed by society after his
or her death. It is a retrospective rather than prospective mode of ~ornmemoration.2~
Let us begin
by looking at the stele of Hegeso, one of the best
known of Athenian grave stelae, which has been assigned dates ranging from the last decade of the fifth
century to the first quarter of the fourth century
(fig. 2).Z8Hegeso sits on a high-backed chair typical
of interior scenes in vase painting.29 Hegeso's presence on the chair, a signifier of interior space, suggests, in the context of the gendered division of the
Greek house, that this space is feminine.30 She has
lifted some object from the open box that a maid
holds in front of her; the position of her hands suggests a necklace, once represented in paint. Her concentration is fixed on this piece of jewelry, not on
the viewer or the slave girl, who equally is transfixed
by the object in her mistress's hands (their gazes cross
directly above her uplifted hand). Thus, Hegeso
is shown being adorned by another woman in the
home. This woman, a slave, is both a marker of
Hegeso's status as a free Athenian woman, as well
as of Hegesds wealth (by being herself a possession,
and by the jewelry box that she holds). She is contrasted visually with Hegeso by her standing posture,
her simpler clothes (represented with fewer elaborately carved folds), and a snood that covers her hair
in contrast to Hegeso's more complex hairstyle. The
seemingly intimate image shows its stereotypical quality in comparison with the many similar stelae that
survive with the same components of woman, slave
girl(s), and box.3' The similarity and repetition of
27 Funerary epigrams commonly stress the links between the dead and the living, either by focusing on the
grief that the dead person has left as a legacy to his or
her relatives, or by emphasizing that the virtue of the
person survives despite death. Good examples are IG 112,
12147 = CAT 1.610; ZG 112, 12495 = CAT 2.850; and IG
112,10672 = CAT 3.279. See also Sourvinou-Inwood (supra
n. 4) 327-38 on the iconography of Charon on white-ground
lekythoi, which articulates the relationship of the dead
to the living, although this can be prospective as well as
retrospective.
28 National Museum, Athens 3624, CAT 2.150. Clairmont
gives the commonly suggested date as 410-400, but notes
that some scholars will not accept a fifth-centurydate (CAT
intro. vol. 15). The precise date of the stele is not relevant
to my purposes here since I am using the Hegeso stele as
an example of a frequently occurring iconographic type
in the corpus.
29Vase paintings of interior scenes usually indicate
walls by the presence of, e.g., fillets hanging from them
(Beard [supra n. 41 23),but this motif is not present on stelae.
3" For the gendered division of the Greek house, see S.
Walker, "Women and Housing in Classical Greece: The
Archaeological Evidence," in Cameron and Kuhrt (supra
n. 23) 81-91, and the opposing view of M.H. Jameson,
"Domestic Space in the Greek City-State," in S. Kent ed.,
Domestic Architecture and the Use of Space (Cambridge 1990),
92-112 esp. 104-109; see also C. Segal, "Admetus' Divided
House: Spatial Dichotomies and Gender Roles in Euripides'
Alcestis," Materiali e discussioni per l'amlisi dei testi classici
28 (1992) 9-26.
3 CAT 2.300 is an almost identical example.
690
RUTH E. LEADER
such images belie the assertion of individual identity, which their inscriptions proclaim. What sort of
identity is constructed for Hegeso in this memorial?
The inscription of the name "Hegeso, daughter of
Proxenos: on the frame of the naiskos defines her
identity through that of her father. The visual representation of Hegeso, adorned by her female slave
in the women's quarters of the house, places her
within the ideology of the secluded, passive Athenian citizen woman, a notion that we know was espoused by the patriarchal norms of Athenian societyJ2The image on the stele is produced by men,
both figuratively, in that it represents a male ideal
of an Athenian woman, and literally, since a male
craftsman is most likely to have carved the stele.
Hegeso's stele commemorates a woman's identity
defined by men, but lived- at least ideologicallyapart from them. Her identity as an individual is
irrelevant here; what matters is that she be definable
within the recognized social framework for women
in Athenian society.33
Stelae with male images form a parallel to the idealized images of women, of which the Hegeso stele
is an example. The images on these stelae construct
their male subjects according to the variety of roles
by which the identity of male citizens was defined
in democratic Athens. Men are shown carrying the
military equipment of the hoplite soldier or prepared for athletic competition in the palaestra, or
as bearded, older men seated with staffs. These
images do not construct their subjects as specific "individuals" any more than the images of women
already discussed.Just as Hegeso is commemorated
as an Athenian woman, so they are commemorated as
Athenian men per se. This can be seen in a survey
of some examples of the men's stelae. The stele of
Chairedemos and Lykeas from Salamis dated ca.
400 BC. (fig. 4) shows two young men, each carrying a round shield on one arm and a spear over
the shoulder.34The two figures overlap, and while
the one behind wears a tunic, the one in front is nude
except for a cloak. We cannot automatically assume
that the stelae that have images of hoplites commemorate men who died in battle, since the Athenian
democracy buried its war dead of each year in one
monumental tomb in the Kerameik0s.~5But the
See, e.g., R. Just, Women in Athenian Law and Lye (London 1989) 105-25, with references to previous works.
Cf. Sourvinou-Inwood's (supra n. 4) accurate description of this type of image as a "socialpersona" 328-37; also
in Reeder (supra n. 10) 116-17.
S4 Piraeus Museum, Athens 385, CAT 2.156.
55 The well-known stele of the cavalryman Dexileos (CAT
2.209) shows that men buried in the state tombs could also
"
[AJA 101
Fig. 4. Stele of Chairedemos and Lykeas, ca. 400 B.C. Ath.
ens, Piraeus Museum 385. (Courtesy Deutsches Archaologisches Institut, Athens)
image of the soldier was a potent symbol of the male
Athenian citizen's duty to his city, and for that reason might be chosen to adorn the graves of those
who had died while they were at the age of military
service, although not while on duty. The stele of Aristion, which dates to the second quarter of the fourth
century, shows a young man, nude except for a cloak,
attended by a diminutive slave boy carrying a strigil,
thus implying the setting of the palae~tra.3~
The
slave boy would seem to be a signifier of status, like
be commemorated by private memorials that show them
as warriors. Although this is the only instance where a name
on the lists from the state graves has been identified with
one from a private memorial, it is possible that the practice was less exceptional than it appears.
36 National Museum, Athens 4487, CAT 1.855. Illustrated
in K.F.Johansen, The Attic Grave Reliefs of the Classical Period
(Copenhagen 1951) 22, fig. 8.
19971
IN DEATH NOT DIVIDED
69 1
the slave girls on women's stelae. He is shown, however, as a different sort of attendant from his female
counterpart: he does not actively help his master,
but looks u p at him admiringly, while female slaves
are shown with lowered eyes. The young man in his
prime is the object of admiration.
In these two stelae the men are all shown standing, which together with their equipment suggests
outdoor, public spaces.37 There is also a series of
images of seated older men, however, of which the
stele of Tynnias is an example (fig. 5).38These form
an interesting contrast to the other images of men,
and those of women. The chair on which Tynnias
sits is identical in form to that of Hegeso, and both
are typical of the stelae's respective types. I suggested
above, in the context of women's stelae, that the chair
was a signifier of the feminine interior, and here it
also signifies interior space. But why should men be
portrayed in interior space, and how in such images
d o they escape the potentially feminizing quality of
a space so strongly associated with women in the
repertoire of images employed on grave stelae? One
reason is age: the men in this type of stele are portrayed at an age when they are no longer active
in the army and the palaestra.3g A man's role at
this age is in one sense a domestic one, the respected position as head of an oikos. Yet the domestic
context implicit in the chair is offset by the staff
that Tynnias holds, which signifies his ability to
move between the domestic and the exterior, civic
world.40 It is a reminder that the woman inhabited
the space of the domestic interior by necessity, the
man by choice. Another example of this formulation
is the stele of Sosinos of Gortyn, whose epitaph describes him as a copper-smelter (xah~61rzqq).~'
He
is shown seated like Tynnias, but holds, in addition
to a staff, an object that is either a tool or product
of his trade and again alludes to his public life.42
The stereotype of "Athenian man" embodied in all
these grave stelae with exclusively male images always makes some reference to the participation in
public life that was a man's duty in the ideology of
the democratic p ~ l i s Men
. ~ ~ are depicted in a way
that denies any knowledge of the existence of women's
worlds,just as the Hegeso stele appears to deny knowledge of men's. The two groups of stelae that I have
37 O n stelae, women are also shown standing, either
alone o r with an attendant, and usually with items that
suggest an interior scene, e.g., CAT 1.283 (fig. 6), CAT3.370.
3Wational Museum, Athens 902, CAT 1.251.
39 O n the iconographic formulas used for representing
older men on stelae, see M. Meyer, "Alte Manner auf
attischen Grabdenkmalern," AM 104 (1989) 49-82.
40 For the staff as a marker of the civic world within the
domestic sphere, seeBeard (supra n. 4) 23. Cf. stelae that represent boys standing with older men who support themselves on staffs, eg., CAT 1.687,1.947. Here the staff is a marker
of age in an implicitly civic context of male social relations.
41 Louvre, Paris 769, CAT 1.202, illustrated in Robertson
(supra n. 6) fig. 121a.
42 For the identification of the object that Sosinos holds,
see Clairmant 81 no. 15, with bibliography. Cf. the representation of Xanthippos, who holds a shoemaker's last,
on his stele in the British Museum (CAT 1.630).
43 Older men like Tynnias of course continued to par.
ticipate in Athenian democracy after the age of military
service, in the lawcourtjuries, in the ekklesia, as archons
o r as members of the boule. It should also be noted that
both Athenian democratic ideology and the images of the
stelae ignore the large number of Athenian men who were
farmers in Attica, and whose work there left them little
opportunity to take part in the daily running of the city.
Fig. 5. Stele of Tynnias. Athens, National Museum 902.
(Courtesy Deutsches Archaologisches Institut, Athens)
RUTH E. LEADER
[AJA 101
discussed so far commemorate men and women
visually through activities that imply an ideal of
highly separated male and female gender stereotypes.
In the case of the Hegeso stele, the act of adornment plays a prominent role in defining the female
stereotype. But what exactly does this act signify?
From a contemporary point of view, we might agree
"props"
with the description of it as "trivial."4"he
that accompany men's images imply action, whereas
jewelry as a definitive prop for images of women
would not seem to carry even the implications of
industry that the spindle and wool basket d o in vase
painting.-'>Yet scholars have given little thought to
what the association between women and jewelry
meant to the Athenian viewer.-'6Why was the theme
chosen so frequently for commemorative images?
O n e possibility might be the role of jewelry as part
of a woman's dowry. Although there is little specific
evidence of the precise composition of dowries, it
seems that among the upper classes they usually
consisted of "money, furniture and other movable
A fourth-century lawcourt speech refers to
a dowry of jewelry and clothes worth 1,000 drachmas.-'*Jewelry, as precious metal, can be converted
into cash in times of hardship. The Athenian woman's
dowry often represented a significant economic contribution to her husband's household, which gave
her status a n d power within that household.^^
Could the (now invisible) jewelry with which the
women on the stelae are adorned be a reference to
their economic contribution to the household, albeit
phrased in visual terms that respect the ideology of
the passive, secluded citizen woman?joWe must consider the possibility that the world of the Hegeso
stele is not the isolated, exclusively female place that
it appears to be. T h e act of adornment there hints
at Hegeso's relationship with men: with her father
who would provide her with the dowry (whose name
is inscribed directly above her head), a n d with the
husband into whose household the dowry would
~ ' I suggested above,
allow her to be i n c ~ r p o r a t e d .As
the denial of the male investment in the domestic
world here is more apparent than real; it is part of
the ideological construct that forms Hegeso's image.
T h e apparent domestic seclusion of women represented on stelae like that of Hegeso is also contradicted by the location of these stelae in cemeteries.
Here women are visible to a civic male world from
which Athenian female culture- the world figured
on the stelae representing women - was excluded,
and the women represented on the stelae can be seen
by men who could not have seen them during their
lifetime. Women's stelae account for a significant proportion of the surviving corpus, but the question
of why women in the late fifth and fourth centuries
were given private memorials as elaborate as those
of their male counterparts has, until recently, been
neglected by most scholars writing on death in Classical Athens.j2 Yet clearly this practice offers a different perspective on women's role in Athenian life from
that found in the majority of literary texts."
To explore this issue further, let us examine some
of the epitaphs associated with women's stelae, a n d
their relationship to the visual stereotypes of gender.
Two epigrams stand out, because they make explicit
the relationship between the deceased woman a n d
her memorial, a n d thus have special potential for
a comparison between visual and verbal articulations
Osborne (supra n. 2) 14.
4"he
motif of the woman spinning is extremely com.
mon in vase paintings, but rare in grave stelae. See Stears
1995 (supra n. 4) 130 n. 11 for a list of examples, some
of which imply rather than depict the act of spinning.
4"he
lack of thought given to this topic may be a re.
sult of the paucity of archaeological evidence for Attic
jewelry of the Classical period; R. Higgins, Greek and Roman Jewelry2 (London 1980) 119-20; and D. Williams and
J. Ogden, Greek Gold:Jewelry of the Classical IVorld (London
1994) 47-50.
L. Foxhall, "Household, Gender and Property in Classical Athens," CQ 39 (1989) 33.
[Dem.] 40.27. Cf. Dem. 27.10, describing his mother's
dowry.
4" Foxhall (supra n. 47) 32-39.
The use of such visual terms fits well with Foxhall's
(supra n. 47) 37-38 claim that the legal rights of Athenian
women (in context of property ownership) were covert
rather than overt.
R. Osborne, "Looking on-Greek Style-Does the
Sculpted Girl Speak to Women Too?" in I. Morris ed., Clas.
sical Greece: Ancient Histories and Modern Archaeologies (Cam.
bridge 1994) 88-95 claims that while Archaic korai represent male social relations in terms of exchange and
symbolic capital, Classical sculptures ofwomen do not perform this function. These images of women on grave ste.
lae, however, seem to show that such issues d o still operate
in certain areas of Classical sculpture.
"2 Both Stears 1993 (supra n. 4) 240-44 and Osborne
(supra n. 8) discuss this issue, reaching the similar conclusion that the commemoration of women becomes im.
portant in the Classical period in a way that it was not
in the Archaic because Pericles' citizenship law put new
emphasis on their role in demonstrating the legitimacy
and citizenship of their sons.
.jl Cf. the naming of women on stelae with the avoidance of naming "respectable" women in discourse of the
lawcourts, discussed by J. Gould, "Law, Custom and Myth:
Aspects of the Social Position of M70menin Classical Athens,"JHS 100 (1980) 45-46.
ad
19971
IN DEATH NOT DIVIDED
693
of gender. Although they are exceptional, belonging
to that fairly small category of funerary epigrams
that can be associated with a surviving figural stele,
they are not atypical of the complex and ambiguous
sentiments of the genre of women's funerary epitaphs.S4 The stele of Pausimache (fig. 6) from the
first quarter of the fourth century B.C. shows a standing woman looking at herself in a hand-mirror.55
The image itself suggests a similar construction of
women's life as concerned with adornment in the
boudoir to that of the Hegeso stele. But our understanding of it is complicated by the verse epigram
inscribed above the relief:
It is fated that all who live must die; and you, Pausimache, left behind pitiful grief for your parents,
your mother, Phainippe, and your father, Pausanias.
Here [stands] a memorial of your goodness [hp~rq]
and good sense [owcppoo6vq] for passersby to ~ e e . 5 ~
Does the memorial image serve as a visualization
of the ideals expressed in the epigram? How exactly
can it do so?Apart from her seclusion, in the woman's
fixed contemplation of her own image in a mirror,
there seems to be nothing that speaks of female virf iliterary
)
sources suggest Athenians contue ( h p ~ ~as
ceived it- in the images of the industrious woman
spinning or weaving, o r otherwise engaged in household tasks (like the image of the wife on the vase in
fig. 1).Rather the image on the relief- a woman looking at herself- suggests the action of the viewer in
the cemetery looking at the woman on Pausimache's
memorial. The viewer sees the representation of Pausimache herself, however, rather than her "goodness
and good sense," which the static relief is unable to
convey, despite its alleged function as a memorial
of those qualities.57
Similar contradictions can be found on other
stelae. Consider the following inscription from a stele
of ca. 350 B.C.:
It was not robes and gold that his woman admired
while she lived; no, it was her own husband and good
sense [oocppoo6v~l][that she loved]. But instead of
Fig. 6. Stele of Pausimache, first quarter of the fourth century B.C. Athens, National Museum 3964. (Courtesy Na.
tional Museum of Athens)
"Epigrams associated with surviving figural representations are collected in Clairmont. I have unfortunately
been unable to consult C. Breuer, Reliefs und Epigramme
mont no. 13. Translation adapted from Clairmont.
57 For a recent discussion of this stele, see E. Fantham
et al., Women in the Classical World (Oxford 1994) 82-83,
although this suppresses the potential problems raised by
thejuxtaposition of the image and the epigram. Also come
pare the less problematic epitaph of Learete (IG XII, 8.398),
which equates the beauty of the dead woman and her
H ~akbv76 pvfipa [xalrqp Eorqoe Bav6o[qt]l
memorial: '
heapk~qt.06 yhp [gz]t C,Boav Eoocpo6p[~Ba]."Beautiful is
the memorial which her father set up to the dead1Learete;
for we shall see her alive no longer.''
griechischer Privatgrabmiiler: Zeugnisse burgerlichen Selbstverstiindnisses vom 4. bis 2. Jahrhundert v. Chr. (Cologne 1995),
which is also relevant here.
55 National Museum, Athens 3964, CAT 1.283.
56 ll&ot Bav~Tv [&]ipapza[l],600t GBotv. ob 6E xkvBo<I
oi~zpbv~ x E [ ~Bktx~<,
]v
nauotpkxq, xpq6~0t<IpqrpM 7E
@atvixxqt~ axarpi
i
llauoaviatl oil[<]6' &ps~ii[<]
pvqp~iov
6p&vz266~
ro~xapu5otv
oocppooljv~[<]
re. Peek, 1654 = Clair-
694
RUTH E. LEADER
your youthful beauty, Dionysia, it is your grave that
your husband, Antiphilos, adorns [ ~ o o p & i ] . ~ ~
Only the top fragment of this stele survives, pre.
serving a frontal woman's head, so we d o not know
whether Dionysia held any of the jewelry that she
disdained in life.59 Nevertheless, the way in which
the epitaph contrasts love of adornment with
"oocppoo6qn(translated here as good sense, also self.
control) is highly problematic given that the act of
adornment characterizes so many representations
of women on grave stelae.60 An ambiguity about the
nature of woman a n d her virtue may b e at issue
here, one that is perhaps fundamental to Athenian
culture's complex a n d ambivalent relationship to
women. Several epigrams express uncertainty about
how women should be praised.6' At the same time,
the majority of epitaphs contradict the statement
of Pericles in Thucydides' version of his funeral ora.
tion that "great is the glory of her about whom there
is least renown among men whether in praise [&p~.rfiq
nkpt] o r in blame."62 Rather, there seems to be a
highly defined language of praise of woman in ep.
itaphs, albeit restricted, like the representations, to
her domestic relationships. T h e epitaphs proclaim
that they are (public) memorials to women's (private)
virtue: this is at the heart of their problematic re.
lation with the images o n the stelae.
Two different constructions of the Athenian
woman seem to be operating here. T h e texts focus
o n the women as examples of &ps.rfiand oocppoo6q,
while images d o not show these qualities in action,
but present women as recipients of adornment. In
the epitaph of Dionysia quoted above, her husband
adorns ( K O ~ N E ? h) is wife's grave instead of her "youth.
ful beauty." Does this imply that h e adorned his wife
5RNational Museum, Athens 2054, CAT 1.417. O6xi
x~xhouq,06 xpuobv EBa6paosv Ep Pi01 ijml &hh&x o o ~ v7s
i ofi< ijpqc, A~ovuoia,
a674< oocppoo6[vqv 7' kcpikEI]/ & v ~SE
E
KOO~E
ob<
? 71001 "A.ricp[rho<].ZG
i [ h ] l ~ i a <?&I T ~ V SZCQOV
112, 11162 = Clairmont no. 20. Translation from Clairmont.
59 Clairmont pl. 10. Clairmont has examined the frag.
ments and thinks that the head is that of Dionysia, who,
since she is shown frontally, most likely was standing. He
suggests that a second figure might have been shown in
profile to the left of Dionysia.
60 The use of owcppoa6vq as a term of praise for women
is a late fifth and fourthcentury phenomenon, and represents an extension of its Archaic funerary use as a civic
virtue exclusive to men. See H. North, Sophrosune: Self
knowledge and Selfrestraint i n Greek Literature (Ithaca 1966)
13-14,252-53. Some further examples of its use in women's
epitaphs of the Classical period: ZG 112, 10864 = CAT
2.820; Peek 893 = CAT 2.335b; ZG 112, 5239 = CAT 3.369b;
cf. the male epitaph IG 112, 8464 = CAT 1.202.
61 E.g., IG 112, 13040: "What in the world is the highest
[AJA 101
while she was alive? T h e epitaph, however, defines
Dionysia's identity as a good wife by her disregard
for ornament. Why, therefore, is the image of the
adorned woman so common in the surviving ste.
lae?63 I suggested above that the significance of
adornment in such stelae is connected to women's
symbolic a n d actual capital within the family. Like
Pausimache's mirror, the jewelry is a marker of the
woman's visibility a n d display to the viewer. T h e dis.
play of women with their jewelry by the Athenian
elite in the late fifth a n d fourth century shows that
avalue was placed on the public visibility of adorned
women after their death, while their female virtues,
which made them valued members of the household,
are inscribed o n the stele. In commemorating their
loss, the family in a sense makes public the images
that during the deceased's lifetime had been seen
by them alone. Despite the fact that these stelae rep.
resent exclusively women within the narrow range
of idealizing gender stereotypes that existed for them
in Athens, ultimately these images should be seen
in the context of the woman's role within the family.
It is this role of the family a n d household (i.e., the
oikos) and its relation to male a n d female gender
stereotypes o n which I concentrate in the final part
of this article.
GENDER WITHIN THE FAMILY
How did Athenian funerary art express gender
operating within the family and household, and how
did it construct the relation of the household to the
city.state in late fourth-century Athens? A new type
of figured grave stele first appears in the latter half
of the fourth century (i.e., from 350 B.C.), which offers
a different perspective o n Athenian familial a n d
praise for a woman, Chairippe received in fullest measure
when she d i e d (60715 Exatvo< bptozo< Ev &v0phno101yuv a 1 ~ 6 vXa~pixnq
l
70670 xh~io70v12x0~0'E@avsv),Peek 893
= CAT 3.335b expresses almost identical sentiments; ZG
112, 5239: "my nature and the goodness that I showed, my
husband knows best what to say about these" (.sob< 66
yv E ? X O ~fipEi</
E V fip6?~p0<x601<
~ p 6 x o u <~ a owcppoo6vqv,
i
O ~ E Vbpl07' E ~ X E VX E P ~7 0 6 7 0 ~ ) .
62 Thuc. 2.45.2: p ~ y a h qi 666a ~ a $5
i av Ex' Ehaxlozov
uv TO?<b p o ~ o r~ 1 6 8.0 Cf.
~ the straight.
&pe74<x6pr 4 ~ d y o E
forward praise of ZG 112, 10864 = CAT 2.820: "Here the
earth covers one who was noble and good, Archestrate,
sorely missed by her husband ('Ev0aSs z i v bya0iv ~ a i
~ u ~xo~s~voza?qv).
~ v
ocbcppova yai' E ~ d h u v ~ 'v lA ~ x E ~ T&vSpi
For a fuller discussion of the parameters of women's praise
in Classical Athens, see N. Loraux, Ew'cWays ofKzllinga Woman
(Cambridge, Mass. 1985) 26-30.
6Vt should be noted that explicit references to adorn.
ment on women's epitaphs are rare; this is the only example
that I have encountered.
19971
IN DEATH NOT DIVIDED
695
gender relations. Instead of showing exclusively merl
or women, these stelae depict groups of male and
female figures of different ages together. This type
has been conventionally referred to as the "family
group," an acceptable term as long as we remember
that the Athenian family was not identical to the mod.
ern nuclear family." Stelae depicting a single man
and woman-usually understood as husband and
wife- appear slightly earlier at the beginning of the
fourth century, and seem to represent a break with
the visual definition of men and women in exclusively gendered spheres.
It has been argued that the multifigured stele
should be linked to trends in the fourth century
toward an increased sense of separation between the
oikos and the polis.'j5 This separation alone, how.
ever, cannot account fully for the range of types of
figured grave stelae, and the ambiguities inherent
in their figuration of gender. Another model stresses
that two different constructions of gender relation.
ships coexisted in the polis and the oikos in Classical Athens." The polis construction was oppositional, seeing male and female as separate and
unequal. The construction of gender within the
oikos, on the other hand, unified that opposition
since within it men and women were required to work
as a single social entity, to ensure its continued prosperity. I would like to suggest that the "family group"
stelae may be a visual embodiment of the idea of
the family as a harmonious, balanced social body.
But since the household and the community con.
struct gender relationships differently, when the two
overlap-as in the funeral where family rites are
enacted in a civic context- there may be social ambiguity and stress.6' If we read those stelae that depict exclusively women (such as the Hegeso stele)
as an attempt to deal with the conflict between house.
hold and community ideals of gender precipitated
by the funeral of a family member, by presenting
an image of a woman in the household that conforms
to the polis ideal of gender separation, this might
account for the ambiguity in the way that such images
deal with the public and private visibility of women.
The commemoration of women is particularly vulnerable to "social ambiguity:' since according to the
definition of gender within the context of the polis
they are inferior to men, and their role in the community is a marginal one. The commemoration of
men is less problematic because they occupy a central role in the community. The images of men in
civic contexts on stelae, however, such as the stelae
of Aristion, and of Chairedemos and Lykeas, maintain that these men have no place in the world of
the family. Clearly this is untrue, since they must have
been part of families, who erected their tombstones.
But it is an example of the exclusion by democratic
Athens of the family from its construction of ideal
citizens, matched by the form of naming the citizens
buried in the state grave in the Kerameikos, which
excludes both patronymic and demotic.
Those stelae that represent both men and women,
on the other hand, adopt a different approach in
the face of the overlap between the gender ideals
of community and household in the context of death.
To understand this approach, let us examine a few
examples, beginning with the earliest type of stele
where a man and woman are shown together as a
couple. The stele of Ktesileos and Theano (fig. 3),
dated to ca. 370 B.C., shows a seated woman, lifting
her cloak slightly68 This act of display is generally
interpreted as a formal gesture of welcome.6Wpposite her stands a man, his hands clasped in front
of him, and their eyes meet. The two figures are usually understood as man and wife, although the in.
scription naming them does not state this.'O That
they are members of the same family at least seems
certain. The couple on this stele bear a close resemblance to that on the vase in figure 1-in both cases
64 Cf. Humphreys (supra n. 3) 67, Foxhall (supra n. 47)
24. See also the stelae set u p for nurses by the families
whom they served, e.g., CAT 1.350 = IG 112,9112;CAT 1.969
= IG 112, 7873.
Humphreys (supra n. 3) 1-32, 61.
66Thim
~ odel is adopted from Foxhall (supra n. 47)
22-43, esp. 23. Although it has been criticized by SourvinouInwood 1995 (supra n. lo), the weight of her criticism of
Foxhall rests on the role of women in state and household
religion, which is not represented on the grave stelae (or
in other forms of visual culture) to any extent. I thus feel
that Foxhall's model is still the most applicable to the sur.
viving visual material.
67 Foxhall (supra n. 47). See also S. Goldhill, "The Great
Dionysia and Civic Ideology," in J.J. Winkler and F.I. Zeit-
lin eds., Nothing To Do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in Its
Social Context (Princeton 1990) 112 for further manifestations of oikoslpolis tension.
"Rational Museum, Athens 3472, CAT 2.206.
69 See Johansen (supra n. 36) 41 n. 1, who compares the
gesture with that made by Hera to Zeus on the Parthenon
frieze.
'0 The man is bearded, so might be assumed to be the
married head of an oikos, but it is worth noting that late
fifth-century wedding vases regularly show the groom as
beardless, so that the presence or absence of a beard can.
not be seen as a defining factor in determining the relationship between men and women on stelae. Meyer (supra
n. 39) 72-73 has noted that age may be exaggerated on
stelae to denote different generations.
696
RUTH E. LEADER
[AJA 101
Fig. 7. Stele of Damasistrate, second half of fourth century B.C. Athens, National
Museum 743. (Courtesy Deutsches Archaologisches Institut, Athens)
an encounter between husband and wife (or at least
a male and a female family member) is shown taking place in a domestic context. The larger "family
groups:' however, like those on the so-called "stele
of Sostrate:' or the stele of Damasistrate (fig. 7), are
unknown on vases.71
The "stele of Sostrate," which is now thought to
have born the names "Malthake, daughter of Demo-
teles, Demoteles, son of Thymokles, of the deme of
Prasias, Demokrateia, daughter of Demoteles," is
among the earliest examples of the family type.72It
shows a seated man holding a staff, flanked on either
side by standing women, one of whom holds a child
by the hand. If the names associated with this stele
are correct, we see a father flanked by his two daughters, with a possible granddaughter represented in
71 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 11.100.2, CAT
3.846; National Museum, Athens 743, CAT 4.430.
72IIllustrated in Robertson (supra n. 6) pl. 124b. The
stele as it survives lacks a pediment, and was formerly associated with one found near it with the name of Sostrate.
This was later found not to fit the relief, and it has been
suggested that another pediment from the same cemetery,
now lost,with the names of Malthake,Demoteles, and Demo.
krateia belonged to the relief. See G.M.A. Richter, "Family
Groups on Attic Grave Monuments,"in R. Lullies ed., New
Beitrage zur klassischm Altertumswissmchaft: Festschrift zum
60. Geburtstag Bernard Schweitzer (Stuttgart 1954) 256-59.
19971
IN DEATH NOT DIVIDED
697
Fig. 8. Stele of Prokleides, Archippe, and Prokles, second half of fourth century B.C.
Athens, National Museum 737. (Courtesy Deutsches Archaologisches Institut, Athens)
the child. In the stele of Damasistrate a seated woman
occupies the center of the relief, and shakes hands
with a man. A slave girl stands behind her chair, and
a younger woman stands frontally behind the other
pair. In both these stelae mature, bearded men are
shown. O n the stele of Prokleides, Archippe, and
Prokles (fig. 8), however, an older seated man shakes
hands with a younger standing man in a cuirass.73
The two male figures, whose ages and the inscription "Prokles, son of Prokleides" suggest that they
are father and son, here dominate the foreground.
A woman, probably the wife of one of them, is
carved in much lower relief in the background,
facing outward.
Traditionally these multifigured reliefs have pre73 National Museum, Athens 737, CAT 3.460. For the restoration of the name of the man on the left as Prokleides,
sented a problem for scholars, deriving in part from
the desire to match figures to inscribed names, and
determine whose death@)are being commemorated.
Although this problem exists for many inscribed
stelae with more than one figure, it is exacerbated
by the inscription of multiple names, which is common on "family" stelae. The stele in figure 8 is a typical example: Prokles, Archippe, and Prokleides are
carved on its frame, with the name of another Prokleides (probably a cousin of Prokles) added later.74
Are the first three named all buried there (the later
addition definitely suggests a burial), or do the names
only serve to identify the figures of the relief? If the
latter, who is deceased, and why is the name of another person added who cannot possibly be shown
see Johansen (supra n. 36) 47-48.
74 Johansen (supra n. 36) 47-48.
698
RUTH E. LEADER
there? T h e formal composition of the reliefs does
not assist in answering such questions. While each
of the three examples of this type cited here shows
a seated figure, it is by n o means clear that in each
case it designates the person commemorated. As both
women and men in this type are shown seated, this
does not seem to be a gendered position of authority either. In fact, the lack of resolution on this issue
suggests that perhaps this is the wrong way of read.
ing such stelae.
A more satisfactory understanding of the aim of
these stelae can perhaps be gained if we see them
as an attempt to represent an ideal image of the family in the context of a funeral, where family unity
is threatened both by the loss of a family member,
a n d by the gender-divisive ideology of the polis,
which controls the space where the funeral takes
place. Another instance of such a move in the fourth
century can be seen in the traditionalism that has
been identified in burial practices in fourth-century
tomb plots in Attica, which attempted to stress the
continuity of the oikos.j5 In this context death becomes an occasion to stress the oikos as unbroken,
despite the departure of a member. The grave plot
guarantees the unity of the family through its dead
members, as well as the living; the ideal image of
the family on the stele could possibly be said to represent both. O n e possible reason why the stelae d o
not have a fixed formal language to denote the deceased, where h e o r she is represented by a single
pose, is because the dead person was not meant to
be singled out, but was intentionally indistinguishable from the other members of the oikos repre~ e n t e d . ~ W l e a rthe
l y focus is less on the commemoration of the individual and more on commemorating
links between a certain group of people on the occasion of the death of o n e of the group.
How are ideal gender relations constructed within
these images of the family? In the "family" stelae, men
-.
Humphreys (supra n. 3) 104-22.
-.
See Richter's (supra n. 72) 238 observation that cer.
tain groups of the same names are found repeated o n two
o r three different memorials, suggesting that "it was customary in Attica to set u p gravestones representing the same
members of a family more than once."
--' IFor a further example of a man in a family group
with attributes, see CAT4.438 (strigil a n d oil flask). On the
power of the head of the household derivingfrom his ability to move between the public and private worlds, see Fox.
hall (supra n. 47) 31.
7H They were, however, sometimes shown with jewelry,
probably made in metal, which was attached to holes bored
in the stone. Both women o n the "stele of Sostrate" have
holes for earrings, a n d o n e of them also has a series of
holes drilled in her hair to hold a wreath o r crown. See
lh
[AJA 101
a n d women are shown occupying domestic space
together, a n d interacting within that space, as in the
handshake on the stele of Damasistrate between
the seated woman a n d the man, o r the apparently
reciprocal gaze between the seated man a n d the
woman to his left on the "stele of Sostrate:' While
in both this type of stele a n d those showing exclusively women, women are always defined in a domestic context, never in a civic one, the representation of men in the same context means that the
importance of their domestic ties a n d their integration with women in the household are also being
highlighted. In some cases the man's role of mediator between the worlds of the oikos a n d the polis
is suggested, for example, by the staff that the man
in the "stele of Sostrate" holds, which like that in the
stele of Tynnias (fig. 3) refers to his public activity,
o r by the strigil visible in the left hand of the man
in the stele of Damasistrate (fig. 7).7 While male
figures in "family groups" may be shown with such
attributes (another example is the cuirass worn by
the younger man in fig. 8), female figures conspicuously lack the jewelry boxes a n d other toiletry implements that they were shown with on the other
type of stele.jH I already suggested that in cases
where these are shown, their function is to hint at
the relationship of women to men within their fathers' a n d husbands' families in a context where the
men themselves cannot be shown. Here, however,
the woman's relation to men as an integral part of
the family unit is made explicit, so that such sym.
bols are ~ n n e c e s s a r y . ~ "
CONCLUSION
hly aim in this paper has been to examine the way
in which the images and epitaphs on Classical Athenian grave stelae constructed gender relations. In
doing so I have made a division between stelae commemorating men o r women with representations
G.M.A. Richter, Catalogue of Greek Sculptures in t h .Metropol~
itan ,Museum of Art (Oxford 1934) 82.
'mR.
van Bremen, "Women a n d Wealth," in Cameron
and Kuhrt (supra n. 23) 223-42 has shown that the role
of elite women as public benefactors in Greek cities in
the Hellenistic period should be seen in the context of the
public display of family unity. In a context where civic re.
lations were increasingly expressed in domestic terms, these
women performed traditionally masculine actions, yet the
potential disruption of such behavior was carefully controlled by the praise for their benefactions, which was voiced
in traditionally feminine terms, anticipated by those used
o n the Athenian grave stelae. S o w see also van Bremen,
The Limits of Participation: Women and Ciuic Life in the Greek
East in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods (Amsterdam 1996).
19971
IN DEATH NOT DIVIDED
of members of the deceased's sex alone, and stelae
commemorating both sexes, which bear images of
men a n d women together as a family. That gender
plays a different role in the family stelae and in the
stelae depicting exclusively men o r women is clear.
T h e former present an image that unites the exclusively gendered worlds of the latter. While gender
roles in the family were not interchangeable between
men a n d women, they operated for both sexes to
ensure a common goal- the smooth running of the
household-and in this way the family was unified
across, rather than divided by, gender differences.
This ideal enables the portrayal o n the stelae of the
family as a union of both sexes. Yet, while this is an
important difference between the two types of stelae,
we must also be aware of the links between them.
T h e visual images on both types are constructions
of an ideal rather than representations of "reality."
We should think of the family stelae as portraying
ideal rather than actual family relations, a unity carefully staged, in response to the crisis of bereavement,
for display in the cemetery. It must not be forgotten
that the family stele uses the same formal stylistic
and compositional elements as the earlier "singlesex" type, and that the two types were used concur.
rently in the latter half of the fourth century. While
the gender structures of the oikos are seemingly denied by the images on the "single~sex"stelae, and are
preserved by the images on the "family" stelae, in
the case of women the denial o n the "single-sex"
stelae is more apparent than real. References to
699
the oikos a n d its social structures can b e read in the
images themselves (covertly),a n d more explicitly in
the epitaphs with their praises of women's virtues
and lamentation of the loss that the women's death
inflicts upon their parents, husbands, a n d children.
Finally, I would like to return to the issue that I
raised in the first section of this article: the physical
a n d conceptual location of Classical grave stelae at
the border between the worlds of the polis and the
oikos. T h e tensions a n d ambiguities implicit in such
a position can be seen to carry over into the representations on the stelae, since it is in the space of
the cemetery, as a result of an individual death and
its attendant familial rites of burial and commem.
oration, that ideals of gender roles within the polis
and oikos are forced into competition. It is perhaps
the varying responses among Athenians to the competition between these ideals that were responsible
for the different types of iconographic composition
encountered o n grave stelae, a n d the epitaphs chosen to accompany them. Classical grave stelae, it
might be fair to say, offered a forum for discourse
about the roles of men a n d women in society and
the relations between them, for the Athenians themselves. as much as for us.
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In Death Not Divided: Gender, Family, and State on Classical Athenian Grave Stelae
Ruth E. Leader
American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 101, No. 4. (Oct., 1997), pp. 683-699.
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[Footnotes]
7
The Iconography of Mourning in Athenian Art
H. A. Shapiro
American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 95, No. 4. (Oct., 1991), pp. 629-656.
Stable URL:
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16
Epitaphs and Citizenship in Classical Athens
Elizabeth A. Meyer
The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 113. (1993), pp. 99-121.
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19
The Viewing and Obscuring of the Parthenon Frieze
Robin Osborne
The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 107. (1987), pp. 98-105.
Stable URL:
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23
Many Brides: "Mistress and Maid" on Athenian Lekythoi
Joan Reilly
Hesperia, Vol. 58, No. 4. (Oct. - Dec., 1989), pp. 411-444.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0018-098X%28198910%2F12%2958%3A4%3C411%3AMB%22AMO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Q
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47
Household, Gender and Property in Classical Athens
Lin Foxhall
The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 39, No. 1. (1989), pp. 22-44.
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http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0009-8388%281989%292%3A39%3A1%3C22%3AHGAPIC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D
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