The Iconography of Mourning in Athenian Art

The lamentation and the commemoration of the dead as a central theme of Attic iconography is traced through the sixth and fifth centuries B. C. In the High Archaic period (ca. 540-490), a major motif in the public commemoration of the male dead, whether in marble stelai and kouroi or on black-figure funerary vases, is the likening of the deceased to epic heroes, e. g., in nostalgic allusions to Homeric funeral games. The Classical period, from ca. 460, represented especially by white-ground lekythoi, focuses instead on the private aspects of the mourning and tending of the dead, which fell primarily to Athenian women. The turning point from Archaic to Classical is attributed to the Persian Wars and the subsequent institution of state burials of the war dead, resulting in a much sharper demarcation between public and private commemoration.