Fragment of a grave relief

This fragment with a relief representation of a handshake comes from an Attic grave stele with a farewell scene. Such scenes include the deceased, usually seated, to whom a standing relative bids farewell; sometimes there is a third standing figure behind or between them. The farewell scene is the most common iconographic subject in Attic grave reliefs after 430 BC, when the production of stelai recommenced after the ban on erecting sumptuous funerary monuments imposed in the city-state of Athens by Kleisthenes in 508/7 BC. It is considered to symbolize the valediction of the dead by their relatives, or perhaps the reunion in the Nether World of those whom death had parted. The fact that the seated figures are usually elderly and the standing ones younger makes the first suggestion the more plausible. Some researchers maintain that this particular subject was chosen to confirm the family ties between the figures portrayed in the stelai; advertising descent may have been important in a period when the right to Athenian citizenship was reserved only for men born of an Athenian mother to an Athenian father (as defined by a law introduced by Pericles ca. 450 BC).