Sarcophagus

Relief from the front of a sarcophagus. The side panels of the sarcophagus are: 59.148.264 and 265. The scene is of Phaethon imploring Helios to lend him the sun chariot. Phaeton is missing because of the three different restorations the relief had. The scene takes place in the interior of the Helio's palace as suggested by the cloth that hangs above the heads and attached to a Corinthian column to the left. The main figures of the scene slightly off the centre are: Helios sits on a rock and leans on with his left hand on his seat. He is nude apart from a chlamys, flung behind his back. The gesture of his right hand with a whip across his chest is the correct one, although a repair. On his head which is ancient he has a diadem. Behind Helios there is a female figure with a long chiton lifting a large swathe of her cloth in her right hand. She is probably Clymene, Phaeton's mother or Selene, the moon goddess, a good counterpart to Helios, the Sun. There are other sarcophagi which show Selene as part of the Phaeton myth with a cresent moon adoring her forehead. She could also be a mixture of both Clymene and Selene. The figure of Phaeton originally stood in front of his mother and would have faced his father, with his hand or elbow on his father's left knee in a gesture of supplication. His hand was removed and the area was restored but there are still indentations on the rock. The lower part of his mother's chiton where he probably stood is very flat and remnants of his chlamys. Oceanus, Clymene's father and relevant to Phaeton's watery demise, is below them, reclined. He is an old bearded man and his body is enveloped in a mantle. Oceanus' attribute, a sea monster (ketos) or sea dragon is twisted around his left arm. He may have originally held a reed stalk in his right hand and he had crayfish claws in his head, both of the claws are chipped. Tellus, another figure of a cosmic relevance is also at the far right corner and is a reminder of Phaeton's destruction of the earth. She is on a rocky terrain with her mantle around her lower body, her right hand resting on a cornucopia whose end she holds in her left hand. The four standing masculine men are the wind-gods who are trying to harness a quartet of wild steeds to the sun's chariots. The shaven wind in the background has wings in his hair, a feature used for semi-gods. The others have beards and carry felline skins around their left arms. The first wind standing in front of the chariot parades atop his pelt a marine trumpet in the form of he long spiral shell. The winds would have originally blown on their sea trumpets but here they hold them like weapons. Their masculinity as well as of the figures on the side panels reminds us of Hercules ( 59.148.264 and 59.148.265 ) The first god has successfully harnessed the unruly horse on to the quadriga but the trunctuated forms of the other three suggest of their return to the ocean. The chariot's body is decorated with a figure of Tethys, a mantle around her lower body and a winged Eos. According to the myth Eos preceded the sun's chariot during its heavenly journey and Tethys received Helios at the end of the day. The counterparts of the male winds are the female seasons on the left hand side of the relief: at the left corner Winter, dressed in a chiton with a mantle around her head, and her right hand on her chest, holds a bare brunch on her left hand. Autumn, next to her and similarly dressed in a chiton and cloak holds a vine in her left hand from which the grape dangled. According to earlier descriptions of the relief, she was originally crowned with grapes and vines. Summer seated and leaning to the right, nude upper body. She holds a bundle of wheat in her left hand, a bull and a sheep at her feet. Spring stands, her right breast exposed and with a spray of flowers in her left hand. Roman sarcophagi of this type were placed in mausolea against a wall or in a niche, and so were decorated on only the front and two sides.