page_39 < previous page page_39 next page > Page 39 nature of the imagery in its sepulchral context transforms this series of apparent failures into a vehicle of heroic symbolism. In offering a heroic image of death, the sarcophagi thus recast the vision of an individual's life. For even Herakles died; everyone dies. These images acknowledge that in memory it is the quality of lifeand deaththat survives and is worthy of commemoration and remembrance.64 The appearance of the embracing couple constitutes the only reference on the sarcophagi to that great eros that bound together goddess and mortal. The image of the intertwined pairdespite differences in its setting, in its pose, and above all in its obvious role in the narrativeendows this particular scene with an emotional tenor not unlike that of Ovid's description. The poet tells how Aphrodite entreated Adonis to lie with her, and how, "pillowing her head against his breast and mingling kisses with her words," she tells him the tale of Hippomenes that concludes with her warning about the dangers of the hunt.65 The motif regularly employed by the sarcophagus designers for the final scene of his death in the goddess's arms is strikingly reminiscent of scenes depicting the love of Aphrodite and Adonis in other works of ancient art. In the images displayed on vases, in frescoes, and in sculpture, the two lovers are often found wrapped in similar embraces, known as symplegmata.66 It was the formulaic quality of the motif that allowed Theocritus to assume his readers would recognize the scene, in Idyll XV, where he speaks of (footnote continued from the previous page) and Archaeology of Death, ed. S. C. Humphreys and H. King (London, 1981), on the Greek conception of commemoration, esp. p. 286: "The individuality of the dead man is not connected with his psychological characteristics or with the personal aspect of him as a unique and irreplaceable being. Through his exploits, his brief life and his heroic destiny, the dead man embodies certain 'values': beauty, youth, virility, and courage." 64. Thus Patroklus dies, and even Achilles: Iliad, XXI.106ff.; cf. the comments of Nock, "Sarcophagi and Symbolism," p. 147. For the formulaic use of the Herakles proverb in Roman epitaphs, see R. Lattimore, Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs (Urbana, 1942), pp. 253254. Cf. Ovid's epitaph for Phaeton (Metamorphoses, II.327328), for even there the monument recasts the tale: "Hic situs est Phaeton currus auriga paterni/quem si non tenuit magnis tamen excidit ausis." For the significance of Phaeton's epitaph, cf. R. Turcan, "Les exégèses allégoriques des sarcophages 'au Phaéthon,' ''in Jenseitsvorstellungen in Antike und Christentum: Gedenkschrift fÃźr Alfred Stuiber (1982), pp. 201f.was this an early instance of the adage De mortuis nihil nisi bonum? 65.Metamorphoses, X.560ff. 66. See the materials collected in Servais-Soyez, "Adonis." My discussion of the symplegma is informed by a lecture given by Aileen Ajootian at the Archaeological Seminar of the Canadian Institute of Rome, May 4, 1988.  < previous page page_39 next page >