Comparing imagery on stone items and ceramics is fairly standard practice in iconographical and iconological studies, but examining these materials with regard to the same function is rarely done. This chapter looks at media at the crossroads in fifth-century BC Athens, specifically at the meeting point of the living and the dead: funerary commemoration.

Scholars point to Cicero's mention of a sumptuary law to explain the disappearance of funerary stelai in Attika in the early fifth century BC (Leg. 2.25-6). The stelai then reappeared c. 430 BC, a phenomenon that is usually credited to the Peloponnesian War or the plague in 429 BC, and changing attitudes and practices toward honoring the dead. According to this line of thinking, the sudden dramatic rise in mortality on the battlefield and in the city may have driven families to begin erecting more elaborate monuments once again. In addition, the institution of the Patrios Nomos, the use of a common grave for the war dead, in Athens c. 470 had consequences for private commemoration. According to this reasoning, the public ceremony deprived mourning families of the ability to honor their family members, and they compensated for this lost opportunity by commemorating their loved one by other means, for example whiteground lekythoi. Other explanations for the suspension of production of stone stelai are economic: that is, the creation of the Themistoklean wall c. 478 BC demanded every bit of stone available, as well as the stonemasons to shape it and put it in place. And building projects in Athens, beginning in the 460s in the Agora, also demanded an available labor force, and the later projects atop the Akropolis monopolized stonemasons for decades. Correspondingly, scholars posit a link between the hiatus in the production of stelai and the proliferation of white-ground lekythoi. The white-ground lekythoi began to appear c. 500 BC, then grew common c. 470 when their use and iconography became exclusively funerary. Therefore, the thinking goes, the ceramic images served as ‘substitutes’ for the stone stelai. As the production of stelai resumed c. 430–420 BC, the white-ground lekythoi dwindled in number until the late fifth century when the ceramic vessels were replaced by grave markers in the form of stone stelai and stone lekythoi (soon to be followed by stone loutrophoroi).