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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1892 Excerpt:...each other. In the hand of one is carried a label, a fruit or vase in that of the other. Owing to the indistinctness of the details, it is impossible to say which. The pose of the figures, seeming to fly across the solid pediment as in mid air, is incongruous, and ill agrees with the simple and sober taste of remote antiquity. This is one reason for suspecting that the decoration is younger than the tomb. The impression thus created is strengthened by the character of the subject, in which no one can fail to recognize a Greek "E/rw?; a commonplace device the ornamentist of the Lower Empire introduced wherever he found a bare corner.1 Indeed, the basrelief betrays the ease and freedom, the nerveless make of the Roman period. This detail apart, the Iskelib tomb is precisely similar to the monuments with which it has been compared; like them it bears the stamp of an age when the influence of Greek culture had not yet made its way into the interior of the peninsula. The conclusion which forces itself upon the mind is that the cupids are an addition of the second or third century of our era, when the long-abandoned tomb received a new tenant. The so-called vault of Solon in Phrygia (Fig. 89) is a conspicuous and certain example of one of those tardy misappropriations. Thanks to this procedure, a man could give himself the luxury of a rich place of burial at little or no cost. All he had to do was to excavate a second chamber, restore the facade, write an inscription over the doorway, and the thing was done.2 Fig. 151,--Iskelib. Tomb IV. Transverse section through back of vault. Ibid., Plate VII. The artist found here, as at Kastamouni, a pediment altogether devoid of ornament, and his horror vaccui prompted him to fill in the space with figures, that would...