Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/398

 382 HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. CHAPTER III. SCULPTURE. THE tomb, the principal varieties of which we have passed in review, whether rock-hewn or built of well-dressed units, was decorated by reliefs as soon as the circumstances of its owner permitted him to indulge in the outlay. Thus the fine series of sculptures in the British Museum are the spoils of a few tombs in Xanthus ; whilst the liberality of half a dozen or so of dilettanti, coupled with the energetic action of MM. Benndorf and Niemann, have added to the wealth of the Vienna Museum, a collection of reliefs which decorated the Heroon at Ghieul Bashi. 1 We do not propose to describe or figure similar works, or those of the like nature that are still in situ. Originality of a high order they certainly possess, be it in the details of costume and more par- ticularly in the themes handled by statuary ; 2 their execution, however, is thoroughly Greek, betraying in every line the hand of Ionian artists or their pupils ; so that they belong to Hellenic art, where we shall find them when we come to treat of the latter. For the present it suffices to show that if from the latter half of the sixth century .B.C., Lycia, violently drawn out of her isolated situation by the Persian conquest and included in the satrapy of Ionia, employed Milesian and Ephesian craftsmen to decorate the tombs of her princes and chief citizens, she had not waited until that day to carve upon the faade of her sepulchres the human and animal form. 1 BENNDORF and NIEMANN, Das Heroon von Gjb'lbaschi Trysa, Vienna, 1888. This elaborate work brings to our notice the reliefs and details of the Heroon. The plates, thirty-four in number, are executed in line engraving, a process rendered perhaps advisable by the dilapidated state of most of the bas-reliefs. 2 In regard to the peculiar nature of the themes referred to, consult PETERSEN, Reisen, torn. ii. pp. 193-196.