Helios, the Sun-god, lost his son Phaethon. Hermes lost his child (the charioteer Myrtilos). Thetis could not save Achilles. Zeus mourned Sarpedon. And the Egyptian Zeus, Zeus Amun, saw that his offspring was mortal – the young man known to posterity as ‘Alexander the Great’.

This list of divine parents affected by bereavement comes in a poetic epitaph inscribed upon a tombstone from Alexandria, in the early first century AD. Like many epitaphs from the Graeco-Roman world, the verses commemorate the ‘virtue’ (arête) of the deceased. They also specify that ‘he quitted the sweet light of the sun before the full span of his years was complete’. In other words, it is a memorial of a premature death.

‘Did not the lord of men and gods shed tears, did he not moan for Sarpedon?’ Our anonymous poem invokes Sarpedon as exemplary of a cosmic rule: that even divine ancestry cannot divert the Moirai, the ‘death-fates’. So much was made clear by Homer. Logically, the immortal parent of a mortal offspring must eventually experience the loss of that child. But this inscribed grave adds a further exemplary aspect. By linking his name with Phaethon, Myrtilos, Achilles and Alexander, the epitaph reckons Sarpedon as an archetype of particularly unfortunate transience. He was beautiful and brave – and too young to die.

‘Untimely death’: the concept was recognized as a phrase in both Greek (thanatos aôros) and Latin (mors immatura). Its representation in art and myth is part of the continuity we address in this chapter, as chronological boundaries move from ‘classical’ to ‘Hellenistic’ and then ‘Roman’. By way of preamble, however, it seems obligatory to give some estimate of what would count as ‘untimely death’ in classical antiquity. Life expectancy rates were of course generally much lower than those of today; but in principle it was nonetheless possible to reach a grand age – Sophocles, for example, was active as a playwright up to his death at about ninety years old. Early in the sixth century BC, verses from the Athenian statesman-poet Solon divided human life into ten units of seven years, so reckoning a death at seventy as ouk an aôros, ‘not premature’: equivalent, then, to A. E. Housman’s definition of due lifespan as ‘threescore years and ten’. Yet, as countless ancient epitaphs confirm, the pangs of mortality were felt not so much in terms of actual age, but rather as relative experience. The worst thing that could befall any parent was to bury an adult or adolescent offspring.

‘But Ares ever loves to pluck the fairest flower from an armed host’. That sentiment is a rare surviving line from the lost tragedy by Aeschylus that dramatized Sarpedon’s story (Fr. 51). It adds a crucial element to the iconographic chain we have seen extending from sympotic vases to funerary lekythoi. As noted (p. 121), Euphronios may consciously have ‘rejuvenated’ Sarpedon, for the hero’s ‘final journey’ to the tomb – the Lycian prince to be venerated like a kouros, as if in his physical prime or akmê. Aeschylus, it seems, put theatrical focus upon the death of Sarpedon as a family loss. A further fragment from the play relays impassioned lines from Europa, Sarpedon’s mother, pleading with Zeus to save their son (Fr. 50). This is supported by a South Italian vase that very probably alludes to the staging of the same play (Figs. 45 and 46). On one side of the vase, we see a female figure in elaborate ‘Oriental’-style robes addressing an enthroned couple. By their poses, and from surrounding props, this couple is taken to be Zeus and Hera. A winged figure distracts Hera: it could be Hypnos, who loves Hera’s daughter Pasithea (see Il. 14.231ff.; Pasithea is perhaps the figure in the background here). The other side must refer to a subsequent scene. Europa’s maternal concern is fulfilled: back in her own palace, she looks up to see the figures of Hypnos and Thanatos descending with Sarpedon’s body. The hero’s children may be among those who also witness the event, which would have been theatrically possible using something like the deus ex machina contraption.

Fig. 45 Apulian red-figure bell-krater, attributed to the Sarpedon Painter, c.400–380 BC. Europa (left), fearing that her son may be killed and abandoned at Troy, implores Zeus and Hera. H 49.9 cm (19.7 in). New York, Metropolitan Museum 16.140.

Metropolitan Museum.

Fig. 46 Reverse of the same vase. The central male figure may be one of Sarpedon’s brothers (in the Hesiod–Aeschylus story, these were Minos and Rhadamanthus).

Metropolitan Museum.

Fig. 47 Athenian red-figure mug, c.425 BC. The assembled fragments appear to show a warrior being lifted up or set down by Hypnos and Thanatos; robed figures occupy the rest of the vase. H 30 cm (11.8 in). Port Sunlight, Lady Lever Art Gallery 5060.

National Museums, Liverpool.

A fragmentary Athenian drinking-mug of the late fifth century BC may also owe its imagery to this dramatic tradition (Fig. 47). ‘Sarpedon brought home’ is here manifest by a pair of winged and bearded figures descending with the hero’s body to an assembly of ‘Lycian elders’, one of them perhaps Sarpedon’s mother in a dark himation of mourning. Aeschylus’ Europa/Carians evidently opened with a speech from Sarpedon’s mother, full of fatalistic concern for her son at Troy; very likely the climactic scene was the aerial arrival of the body. Again, a tenuous little figure in added white appears as Sarpedon’s spirit-representative – the eidôlon that must hover until a tomb (its ‘home’) is found for the body.

Homer did not elaborate on the particular anguish of parental loss for any casualty on the Trojan plain – except that of Zeus for Sarpedon, and Priam for Hector. Whether the Aithiopis, as a ‘sequel’, showed more concern in this respect we cannot say (too few fragments of the epic remain); we understand, however, that it recounted the fate of another foreign ally at Troy, the Ethiopian hero Memnon. Memnon was the son of a divine mother, Eos, the goddess of Dawn; his father Tithonos, a brother of Priam, had been made immortal too – but alas, not also unsusceptible to ageing (so he gradually shrivelled, and had to be shut away). Memnon caused parental grief when he killed Antilochus, Nestor’s son. Then Memnon in turn fell to Achilles, and the lament from his mother was tremendous – to judge by several visual evocations. One black-figure vase, in the Vatican, depicts a female figure standing over a warrior’s stripped and lifeless body, tugging at her hair; while a red-figure cup by Douris, clearly labelled, shows a winged Eos retrieving her son (Fig. 48).

The fates of Memnon and Sarpedon were sometimes ‘twinned’ in antiquity: on the painted walls of the Meeting-Room (Leschê) of the Cnidians at Delphi, the two were placed together in a scene of the Underworld (Paus. 10.31.2), and Aristophanes made the pair a joint occasion of divine mourning (Nub. 622). A fragment of a krater attributed to Euphronios (in New York) indicates that the artist may also have attempted the scene of Eos with Memnon: as Bothmer remarked, ‘we would give a lot to have more of a Memnon krater by Euphronios’. We would be glad, too, to know how Aeschylus dramatized the Memnon story and beyond, in a trilogy of which the first instalment was reportedly entitled Memnôn, and the second Psychostasia (‘Weighing of Souls’); a third probably dealt with the death of Achilles. It is conceivable that Eos was matched in some kind of debate with Thetis, as both mothers lobbied Zeus to show favour for their son – though neither, alas, can be successful.

Aeschylus presented his plays originally to an Athenian audience. Within a century, however, his works had become ‘classics’ of the repertoire, and as such were performed throughout the colonies of Magna Grecia – the ‘Great Greece’ of southern Italy and Sicily. Eventually such plays would be translated into Latin, facilitating mythographical traffic between Greece and Rome. So, Homer’s epic was not the only conduit for the Sarpedon narrative as it ‘migrated’ westwards; and nor were South Italian vases the sole medium of visual transmission. A play is portable, and a troupe of players could travel – but the lack of ‘mass media’ in the ancient world does not mean that images were much less mobile by comparison. There is abundant evidence to prove that artists were peripatetic around the Mediterranean, particularly artists trained in Greek workshops. The ‘diffusion of classical style’ beyond Greece is not some fantasy of modern scholars. This is why it is legitimate to register visual ‘echoes’ of the Sarpedon motif across considerable distances of space and time, and in various forms. Sometimes it appears that the motif does indeed denote the story of Sarpedon – but not necessarily. Part of the power we sense in the prototype as presented by Euphronios is that while there are labels identifying a particular epic occasion, this image is potentially universal. Its adoption by the painters of Athenian white-ground lekythoi has already demonstrated that potential: over succeeding centuries the image goes ‘from strength to strength’. It has, in today’s jargon, transferable skills.

Fig. 48 Eos with the body of Memnon: interior of a kylix by Douris, from Capua, c.490–480 BC. Paris, Louvre G 115.

Before we turn to other media, it is instructive to observe that transferable quality as evident in South Italian vase-painting. A large volute-krater of the mid-fourth century BC shows what happened to the body of Hector after the vengeful fury of Achilles was subsiding. King Priam, according to Homer (Il. 24.229ff.) collected a generous ransom, including ten talents of gold, and approached Achilles directly to persuade him to release the body. The episode was elaborated by a number of Greek playwrights, beginning with Aeschylus; the Latin dramatist Ennius also produced a script. What we see on the vase may be indebted to one of these plays – but it surely also owes something to the Sarpedon motif (Fig. 49). The two figures carrying Hector are not labelled. There is no sign that they are Hypnos and Thanatos – and yet it is hard to resist the suspicion that the artist has seen something like the motif of Hypnos and Thanatos with a corpse. (A completely naked body is unlikely to have been exhibited on the stage.)

Fig. 49 Detail of an Apulian red-figure volute-krater, attributed to the ‘Circle of the Lycurgus Painter’, from Ruvo, c.350 BC. Priam gestures from his throne, and a set of scales is also visible (by one version of the story, Hector was worth his weight in gold). St Petersburg, Hermitage 1718 (St. 422).

Homer’s narrative provides the logic that would underpin the iconographical transfer here. When Priam – at some risk to his personal safety, though he will have certain divine assistance – beseeches Achilles for Hector’s remains, a significant part of the largely benign response from Achilles is based upon paradigmatic likeness. That is, Achilles calls to mind his own father, Peleus – with ‘only a single son doomed to untimely death’. Achilles then attempts to comfort Priam by citing the precedent of Niobe, who lost all twelve of her children to slaughter (and by a contorted twist of ‘paradigmatic extension’, Achilles claims that Niobe consequently did not lose her appetite, and therefore that Priam should stay for supper). So, we see how the example of Sarpedon is thematically related to Hector’s fate. Priam is in the same position as Zeus: powerless to save his son’s life, but acutely concerned to retrieve the body and ensure a proper burial.

The essential simplicity of ‘the Sarpedon theme’ as epitomized by Euphronios could only favour its diffuse application. Two uprights with a horizontal bar: the formal reduction of the scheme makes it almost inevitable that it served various imaginative applications. A nice example occurs within a series of bronze containers of a type known by the Latin term cista, and traditionally associated with the Latin site of Praeneste (Palestrina). These cistae have been recovered from tombs; what they contained appears to have been small items precious to the deceased. The sheet bronze forming the cylinder would generally be given incised decoration, often mythological scenes (and often with Etruscan inscriptions), while the lid was supplied with a solid bronze handle formed of some figurative motif. The shapes can be ingenious (e.g. an acrobat caught in a backflip), but also sombre, as if befitting the funerary purpose. So the motif of a rigid (dead) body raised by two bearers became a useful accessory (Fig. 50).

Fig. 50 Handle of a bronze cista from Praeneste (Palestrina), fourth century BC. H 13.3 cm (5.25 in). New York Metropolitan Museum 13.227.7.

Fig. 51 Bronze cista-handle, 400–375 BC. H (without base) 14 cm (5.5 in). Cleveland Museum of Art, J. H. Wade Fund, 1945.13 (ex-Castellani collection).

Cleveland Museum of Art.

This deployment of the motif occurs on over half a dozen of surviving cistae but is never identically similar. The figures lifting the body may be winged, and female – in which case reckoned as ‘Etruscan death demons’; on one example (in the Villa Giulia) the group appears to represent two female warriors or Amazons, raising the naked body of one of their number. Is Memnon sometimes intended? Quite possibly – though it may be safer to conclude, with Beazley, that here we have ‘a decorative type without any mythical significance’. On one example, however, the case for recognizing Sleep and Death with the body of Sarpedon seems strong (Fig. 51). One could believe that whoever made this little group had seen something like the Sarpedon krater: two winged figures in hoplite armour, with bent knees; their charge a muscular youth, his long hair hanging down.

It is testament to the potency of the motif that it retains essential significance even when subject to variations of detail – and when reduced to a miniature scale. An Etruscan scarab of the early fifth century BC exhibits both qualities (Fig. 52). It may seem strange to us that an item of personal adornment should be invested with an epic theme. But many Greek and Etruscan finger-rings are engraved with heroic vignettes. They served rather like heraldic devices – especially when used as sealstones – and as such, may express heroic aspirations and aristocratic values on the part of those who wore them. Portable, small-scale objects naturally assist in the broadcast of a motif. Within that size category belong those carved reliefs famous for conveying the great theme of the Trojan saga ‘in a nutshell’ (Figs. 53 and 54).

Fig. 52 Carved sardonyx, c.500 BC. Body of a warrior carried by two winged figures, male and female. Length 16 millimetres (0.6 in). Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 21.1200 (ex-Tyskiewicz/Lewes House collections).

Fig. 53 Tabula Iliaca Capitolina: marble relief of the late first century BC. H 42 cm (16.5 in). Rome, Capitoline Museums 316.

There are over twenty surviving pieces of such ‘Iliac tablets’. Once they were regarded by classical scholars as somewhat banal epitomes of the several epics relating to Troy, i.e. the Iliad, Aithiopis, ‘Little Iliad’ and Ilioupersis, concocted as a sort of ready-reference for Romans with intellectual pretensions yet no time (or inclination) to study the texts. But it has been persuasively argued that whoever owned these productions (where ascribed, their makers are evidently Greek) must have cultivated a subtle and flexible comprehension of the Trojan saga-cycle. The details of the reliefs are not as clear as once they were: in section ‘omega’ of the Capitoline tablet we see that a body (which must be that of Hector) is being carried – but whether by three figures (as a nineteenth-century drawing suggests) or by two figures with a third (old Priam?) holding the hand of the corpse (as later imagery suggests) we cannot now determine. Juxtaposed is a scene of a waggon, loaded with the gifts brought by Priam as ransom for his son; and then Priam, who has been guided by Hermes (see Il. 24.457), begging for mercy in the tent of Achilles (see Fig. 54).

Conceptually there is no problem about reading right to left here – should we be wondering about the sequence of events. And if we let our eyes wander further down the registers, we cannot help but notice the corpse-carrying motif recurring in section ‘rho’. Is it mere coincidence that here it represents the dead Patroclus? Or does the visual repetition propose (in the words of Michael Squire) ‘a semantic relationship’ between the deaths of Hector and Patroclus? And could both representations owe their form to a semantically related original – the rescue of the body of Sarpedon?

Fig. 54 Detail of the Tabula Iliaca (section omega). The legend (from left to right) identifies Hector; ‘kai lutra Hektoros’ (‘and the ransom of Hector’) – evoking the title of Iliad 24 (omega); then Hermes, Priam and Achilles.

after O. Jahn, Griechische Bilderchroniken, pl. 1.

Fig. 55 Ivory relief, mid-first century BC, from Pompeii (Regio I.2.5). The other side of the piece – of uncertain function – shows a wounded figure (Adonis?) being tended. H 7.6 cm (3 in). Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 109905.

Naples, Museo Archeologico.

Fig. 56 Detail of a fragment of a marble relief with a scene of funerary portage, early first century AD. Probably from a villa in the ager Tusculanus. A matching portion is conserved in the Galleria Colonna, Rome. H 93 cm (36.6 in). Grottaferrata, Abbazia di Santa Maria, inv. 1155.

One factor aiding the recognition of the motif is the so-called ‘braccio della morte’ – literally, the ‘arm of death’: the limb hanging down as signifier of loss of consciousness. The Italian phrase is ambivalent – it can mean the ‘death row’ of a prison; but whether or not the phenomenon has physiological validity, it served artists for centuries after Euphronios. And not only artists – as confirmed by what might seem an unlikely source, a descriptive detail in Suetonius’ ‘Life’ of Julius Caesar. Though composed about a century after Caesar’s death (in 44 BC), this conveys a sense of eye-witness accuracy (and was probably based upon late Republican sources). In that regard, we see that when Suetonius comes to the story of the dictator’s assassination, he specifies that in the immediate aftermath of the multiple stabbing, not only did all the conspirators flee the scene, but none of Caesar’s family or friends came near: it was therefore left to three slaves to retrieve the body, and carry it home on a litter, dependente brachio – ‘with one arm dangling down’ (Div. Iul. 82). Why does Suetonius include that observation? Could it be that he wishes to evoke, in his readers’ minds, the stereotypical ‘classic’ image of the fallen hero borne home? Whether conscious or not, that purpose would not be out of place: after all, Caesar’s extremely violent end is an essential stage of his heroicization. Within days, the Senate would vote that Julius Caesar be added as a god to the Roman pantheon.

The visual foundation for making that suggestion is not hard to find. Again, we are struck by the variety of media in which the same (or very similar) motif is deployed. Thus, by way of examples: a small curved plaquette, in ivory relief (Fig. 55); a large marble panel (Fig. 56); and a terracotta lamp (Fig. 57).

Fig. 57 Antiquarian drawing of a Roman lamp (now lost). Simply titled (by G. P. Bellori) ‘Soldato morto in guerra’ (‘Dead Warrior’). First century BC?

after G.P. Bellori, Antiche lucerne sepolcrali figurate raccolte dalle cave sotterranee e grotte di Roma (Rome 1691), pl.10.

These images share certain features – for example, the elderly figure in the background, accompanying the body; but that is not to say their subject(s) should be the same. The Grottaferrata relief may represent the death of Meleager, who in one storyline dies in battle; given the prominence of the shield and helmet on this piece, a case has also been made for Achilles (whose armour will be contested as a possession by Ajax and Odysseus – another source of Trojan tragedy). For the little plaque from Pompeii, Adonis has been proposed – though it is not clear why Adonis, a hunter, should be carried by bearers in military garb. All these suggestions, however, have something in common with Sarpedon. They are cases of premature death: and as such, they prime us for the most extensive ‘recycling’ or ‘reworking’ of the Sarpedon motif in Graeco-Roman art, which occurs in Roman sarcophagi of the imperial period.

The virtual poet laureate of Rome was Vergil. In two separate poems, Vergil imagines what it would be like to go down into the Underworld and see the multitudes of spirits there. These spirits are as multitudinous as autumn leaves. But of them all, a special category is singled out for pity: ‘great-hearted heroes, boys and unwedded girls, young ones laid on the funeral pyre before their parents’ gaze’ (Aen. 6.305–12; see also G. 4.475ff.). For all that mors immatura may have been commonplace in the ancient world, its poignancy was nevertheless terrible. We should not be surprised, then, by the fact that so many of the figured sarcophagi produced for the Romans seem to focus, thematically, upon mythological instances of a premature end. The imagery of the sarcophagi may require some lateral thinking on the viewer’s part: for instance, a scene of young Achilles dressed as a girl in the court of King Lycomedes, on the island of Skyros, will have to be related to the motives of his mother Thetis, who placed Achilles there (she did so in the hope that her son, doomed to die at Troy, might somehow avoid recruitment to the Greek forces). An evocation of the fall of Icarus might initially seem to be a lesson about filial (dis)obedience, not premature death; and when we see the story of Medea relayed, concern about her children, and the fate of Jason’s new young wife Creusa, may not be uppermost in the viewer’s mind. Other scenes, however, obviously serve as consolations in the same way as the Alexandrian poetic epitaph with which this chapter began – i.e. even heroes, and those whom the gods adore, can die young.

Over 200 surviving sarcophagi or sarcophagus-pieces feature the hero Meleager, making his story the single most favoured choice as a mythological subject for the genre. Quite why it became so favoured is open to speculation: it may have something to do with the way in which Ovid, in the early first century AD, managed to weave Meleager into the epic hexameters of his Metamorphoses. But like many Greek myths, the tale of Meleager has variants, which may be important when it comes to understanding the iconography. In Homer (Il. 9.529ff.), Meleager is a champion warrior who, like Achilles, takes umbrage and turns ‘passive aggressive’; his fame, however, lies chiefly in despatching an enormous wild boar that was ravaging his father’s kingdom of Calydon, in Aetolia. The best-known version of this tale, probably based upon a lost play by Euripides, is that told by Ovid (Met. 8.267–546): Meleager, having killed the boar, and feasted upon it with his fellow-hunters, offers its hide as a gift to his new girlfriend, the swift-footed Atalanta, who was first to spear the beast. His mother’s brothers, part of the expedition, are outraged by this gesture. In the acrimony that ensues, Meleager kills both of his uncles. The news of their deaths is reported to his mother, Althaea. She has a secret: when Meleager was born, the Moirai appeared and told her that her son’s life should last as long as a certain log in the hearth. Then Althaea had snatched up the log, and kept it intact. Now she is furious with her offspring. Ovid enjoys the fatal dilemma of mother and sister before relating how the log is thrown to the flames – and as it burns, Meleager, still out in the countryside with his team, mysteriously weakens and dies.

Fig. 58 Roman marble sarcophagus, showing the hunting of the Calydonian boar, and death of Meleager (upper left corner), AD 170–180. 1.24 × 2.47 × 1.10 metres (4’ 1” × 8’ 1” × 3’ 7”). Rome, Palazzo Doria Pamphilj.

Alta iacet Calydon: ‘high Calydon was laid low’. Not if his poetic powers were multiplied a hundred times, claims Ovid, could he convey the extent of widespread mourning for Meleager. Althaea commits suicide; family and friends are prostrated; and several of his sisters cry so piteously and continuously that they are transformed into guinea-fowl. Possibly it was this superlative of grief that made the subject eminently suitable for the decoration of a sarcophagus. While the myth is fantastic, it offers (to borrow the terminology of Paul Zanker) ‘bridges’ for the viewer to connect with Roman funerary custom: so, for example, the boar-hunters’ feast may resemble or reflect the al fresco funerary meal (silicernium) that families took by way of honouring the ancestral dead. And sculptors rose to the challenge implicitly issued by Ovid. How could a work of art encompass the magnitude of Meleager’s loss? A number of sarcophagi show the youthful corpse laid out on a bier, with family members and domestic staff in assorted postures of distress. But a greater number display the carrying home of the body, in a sort of cortège or thiasos. Participants may include the Dioscuri (with their horses) and other hunters, Meleager’s father King Oeneus, his sisters and his aged pedagogue, as well as his beloved Atalanta. If warriors are shown, or a war-chariot, these may reflect the Homeric version of the story – or indicate Meleager’s concern (mentioned by Ovid: Met. 8.515–25) that his death is not gloriously located on the battlefield. Above all, however, the viewer’s attention is drawn to the hero’s body. Usually it is stripped, so distinct from all the armed or robed figures around (their robes furnishing strong diagonals of emotional turbulence); often it is also conspicuously oversized. According to the narrative, Meleager dies slowly, as the firebrand of his lifespan gradually burns. On the sarcophagus-reliefs, the primary sign that he has expired will of course be the ‘braccio della morte’ – the inert arm hanging vertically.

A ‘classic’ example of the type – a sarcophagus that has been known since Renaissance times (see p. 203) – may be found at the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj, in Rome’s historic centre, on display with diverse antiquities, and pictures by Caravaggio and other ‘old masters’ (Fig. 58). The principal scene shows the boar hunt which led to Meleager’s tragedy; and on another side of the sarcophagus we find the huntress Atalanta, sitting on a rock, clasping one hand to her face in an unmistakable attitude of horrified loss. The death has happened within the decorative time-frame established by the sarcophagus as a whole: and so the viewer’s gaze will locate the corpse of young Meleager, within a funerary procession arranged along a frieze on the front of the lid (Fig. 59). Details of carving have eroded over time – but erosion only heightens the salient features of composition. Meleager here is distinctly oversized in relation to those involved in transporting his body. A swag of drapery beneath his form may indicate a rudimentary sort of stretcher, but otherwise the three figures carrying the hero are patently struggling. One turns his head as if to call for extra hands. Another holds an awkward purchase upon Meleager’s thigh. Forward direction is devolved to a figure who appears to have placed Meleager’s legs over his shoulders, and is lurching along with both knees at a sharp angle.

Fig. 59 Detail of the sarcophagus-cover. H of lid 30 cm (11.8 in). Rome, Palazzo Doria Pamphilj.

Fig. 60 Detail of a Roman marble sarcophagus, showing infants conducting a mock-heroic funeral scene, c.AD 160. H of entire piece 40 cm (15.7 in). Basel, Antikensammlung 434 (Züst).

after Koch 1975, pl. 75.

This sarcophagus was – presumably – found in Rome. Once – probably – it belonged to the funerary precincts of a Roman family, where it would have been on view to family members paying regular visits to honour their ancestors – the maiores, or ‘greater ones’. We call it a ‘Roman’ sarcophagus. However, it was very likely made by Greek sculptors; and production of sarcophagi was manifestly a trans-Mediterranean process, with important sources of marble, and sculptural workshops, at sites in Roman Asia Minor, such as Tralles and Aphrodisias. Finishing touches may have been added once a sarcophagus reached the capital. Yet again, we are reminded of the traffic of myths and motifs in antiquity: the process of transit, across both space and time, whereby an image devised at Athens in the late sixth century BC is essentially still ‘at large’ during the Antonine apogee of the Roman empire.

A signal of how ‘classic’ the motif had now become is given by a sarcophagus reserved for a child’s death. (As such, there is no doubting that it marks mors immatura.) It plays – and ‘play’ seems the appropriate verb here – a visual variation on the theme (Fig. 60). No adults are present. Instead, a troupe of cherubs, or putti, enact, as seriously as they can, the tableau of the hero borne home – complete with braccio della morte.