In the next chapter we shall be coming to the period described as Hellenistic; the adjective, coined in modern times on the pattern of ancient Greek and meaning “living in the manner of the Greeks” corresponds to the noun Hellenism, the use of which was popularized by the German scholar J.G. Droysen to designate the three centuries from 323 to 30 BC, covering the period from the depth of Alexander the Great to the founding of the Roman Empire. During this period all the territories from Egypt to the frontiers of India, once the possessions of the Great King of Persia and now conquered by Alexander, came under the power of Greek dynasties, a fact which necessarily contributed to Hellenizing them. The artistic Hellenization of the east, however, began long before its political subjugation. There is evidence of that in several monuments which are important and exceptional enough to merit brief description here.

a warrior stands before a seated person with whom he is exchanging a helmet. A bird with the breast of a woman is placed on each side of the group. These figures were at first taken for harpies, but they are much more likely to be sirens (the Greek siren was part woman, part bird and not, like the mermaid of later European folklore, a woman with a fish’s tail). They are carrying off small human figures. The west relief, which contains the door to the funerary chamber, shows a seated woman at each end, one holding a patera, the other holding a pomegranate in her lefr hand and a flower in her right hand; three more women are depicted in front of her. The first carries nothing, the second is smelling a flower and carrying a pomegranate, the third holds an egg. Above the door to the funerary chamber a cow is suckling her calf The two other reliefs are equally enigmatic. The length of these descriptions reflects the commentators’ perplexity: the reliefs of the Monument of the Harpies are stylistically close to reliefs of the same period in Greece, but thematically diverse. There can be no doubt that the images relate to native, non-Greek funerary ritual and eschatology. As we know nothing about that ritual, the meaning of the scenes almost entirely escapes us; we can be fairly sure that the small human figures being carried off by the sirens are the souls of the dead, and the repeated pomegranate motif signifies that in Lycia, as in Greece, the pomegranate was linked with death, but are the seated figures dead people or gods? Are the scenes illustrated ceremonies of this world or the underworld? Why is there a cow suckling her calf? We know so little of Lycian belief and cult practices connected with death that none of these questions can be answered.

Finally, we may add to these four great funerary monuments of the neighbouring provinces of Lycia and Caria the sarcophagi discovered so a necropolis near Sidon in ancient Phoenicia. Like the much later sarcophagi of the Imperial period, these are marble chests with lids, their sides ornamented with reliefs. The sarcophagus known as the “Sarcophagus of the Sarrap”, dating from the middle of the fifth century, has been given that name for its representation of the life of an oriental ruler, seen banqueting, enthroned and hunting. Another sarcophagus, probably of some decades later, has a tall, arched lid of the kind usual in Lycia, and has therefore been dubbed ‘Lycian Sarcophagus”. The cover is carved with sphinxes and griffins, there arc scenes of a centauromachy o the short sides of the chest, boys in quadrigas hunting kiln on one of the long sides, and horsemen, naked but wearing petasi or tiaras, hunting wild boar on the other. The fourth-century “Sarcophagus of the Mourning Women” takes its name from its very unusual decoration, reminiscent of the standing female statues between the columns of the Nereid Monument. Ionic columns are carved on the sides of the chest, linked half-way up by a parapet upon which draped women in grief—stricken attitudes are sitting or leaning. Last, and dating from the end of the century, the ‘4Alexander Sarcophagus” shows a battle between Greeks and Persians on two consecutive sides of the chest, with hunting scenes on the other sides (the creatures being hunted are the stag, lion and panther). The “Alexander Sarcophagus” never contained the mortal remains of the famous conqueror. In fact we know nothing about the makers or occupants of any of the tombs described above, with the sole exception of the Mausoleum, which escaped such anonymity because of its fame as one of the Wonders of the World. In the case of the Mausoleum, we are lucky enough to know that a non-Greek ruler of Caria, part of the Persian Empire, or rather his wife Artemisia, commissioned Greek sculptors and architects to build and decorate a vast tomb at Halikarnaisos, not particularly surprising when we remember that this city, situated on the Anatolian coast, was only a few sea miles from the island of Kos, so that it was very natural for its people to be familiar with Greek art and appreciate it. There we know the name of the person who commissioned the work and the artists who carried it out, but although their equivalents elsewhere may remain anonymous they must have been people of the same kind: “barbarians” (the term used in ancient Greece for all non—Hellenes), influenced and attracted by Hellenism, who commissioned Greek artists, or at least artists trained in the Greek manner.

Commissions of this nature, bringing Greeks to work in foreign countries, explain the special character of these monuments. In one way it ii easy to understand why they regularly feature in books on Greek art; one hardly needs to say that the friezes of the Mausoleum of Halikarnasios are entirely in keeping with other contemporary Greek relief, since we know for certain they are by Skopas or one of his colleagues. Moreover, the unknown creator of the Nereidi made statues in the round, very like the reliefs on the Acropolis at Athens or the Victories on the parapet of the temple of Athena Nike in their variety of attitudes, and their wind—blown or wet draperies clinging to the body. Similarly, the cavalcade of boar-hunters on the “Lycian Sarcophagus” at Sidon is reminiscent of the horsemen in the Panathenaic frieze, and the quadrigas hunting the lion are not inferior to similar Athenian votive reliefs. More examples could easily be given.