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Funerary Stele of Apollas Perigeneios
Unknown · First half of the 1st century BC
A marble stele from Chalcedon, on the Asian shore of the Bosporus opposite Byzantium, arranged like a page of a man's life. In the pediment two tritons hold up a round shield. Below it a shelf of objects: a tripod and a palm branch, the prizes of games; a sword in its scabbard with its belt; a wreath with trailing ribbons; a water jar. In the lower register only the top of the man's head survives, but behind him is a second shelf with an inkwell, a writing tablet, several scrolls tied together and a box. The bottom of the stele is lost. On the architrave two lines of Greek give his name: Apollas son of Perigenes, by birth the son of Kratinos.
The inscription tells us he was adopted, and the objects tell us how he wished to be remembered: as an athlete who had won crowns, a soldier, and a man of letters with a library of his own. Stelae with such still lifes were popular in the Greek cities of Asia Minor in the last century before Christ. The Louvre received the stele as a gift in 1893.
Did You Know? The shelf of scrolls, tablet and inkwell tells us the dead man was a scholar, and the sword and wreath that he was also a soldier.
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