Some of the monuments present scenes of every day domestic life or of a lady engaged about her toilet. In a relief, found at Athens, some kind of a repast or feast is shown. A bearded man reclines upon a couch and holds a plate or saucer in his hand, his wife is seated at his feet and a naked cup-bearer is near at hand. A friend stands at the head of the couch and the dog lies under it.
The lecyth was not an uncommon form of the funeral monument. The sculptor, in that case, made the vase of colossal size and decorated it with scenes of curious interest. On one of them Hermes Psychopompe is leading away a beautiful figure to the land of shades. The form of some of the monuments and the inscriptions on them indicate that they had a double purpose to serve and that, in addition to being memorials of the dead, they were votive offerings to the departed, who had become objects of worship.
In this connection, it may be instructive to refer to the vigorous contest which has been waged between different archaeologists over the interpretation of the representations of feasts on the sepulchral monuments, reliefs and pictures. The most probable explanation seems to be that the central figures are not deities[212] but the deceased receiving that nourishment which he required, as well after death as while living, that the patera or the wine cup is extended to receive the libation or the food, that the horse and dog were the images of those faithful domestic animals whose usefulness would be as great in the Elysian fields as during life. The pomegranate in the hand of the feaster confirms the opinion that he is a deceased mortal, that fruit being appropriate to the dead after the analogy of Persephone who was subtly induced by the god of the lower world to taste the pomegranate and thereafter could never return entirely to the upper light. The presence of the serpent is more difficult to explain, although the incident of the large snake that twined about the body of Cleomenes in Egypt and drove away the birds of prey may assist in clearing up the mystery. Plutarch says that some of the Alexandrians being terrified at the sight of the serpent clinging to the body of Cleomenes, it was pointed out that as bulls develop bees after death, and horses produce wasps, so the human body, as it decayed, turned into snakes. The wife of the deceased is seated because the reclining posture at the table was peculiar to the men and was never assumed by a modest woman.