Monument of Dexileos

Monumentum Dexileos

TombAchaea · Kerameikos, Athens, GreeceBuilt 394 BCE

About

This carved marble relief tomb stood along the Street of Tombs in Athens's Kerameikos cemetery, showing the young cavalryman Dexileos striking down a fallen enemy from horseback. Its inscription recorded his birth and death with unusual precision, noting he died at Corinth in 394 BCE at the age of twenty. The Kerameikos remained Athens's principal burial ground and a visited landmark straight through the Roman period.

What happened here

Roman burial is a family matter conducted in public. The dead are carried out of town, cremated or laid in the ground, and mourned with formal noise; the funeral of anyone important is a procession with masks of the ancestors carried by hired men. The tomb that follows is designed to be read by strangers on the road: name, age, offices, sometimes a trade shown in relief, often a line addressed directly to the passer-by. Ordinary people appear here as they nowhere else — a baker with his ovens carved on the front, a freedman naming the woman he could finally marry, a child's age given in days. Anniversaries bring the family back with food and wine.

In ancient writing

Funerary inscription (epigraphic), IG II² 6217 IG II² 6217
The inscribed base of the surviving grave stele in the Kerameikos names Dexileos son of Lysanias of Thorikos, gives his birth and death archon-years (414/3-394/3 BCE), and states he died at Corinth as one of five cavalrymen — a genuine, in-situ funerary inscription directly naming this monument's subject.