Private Engagement with Civic Death

This chapter begins by tracing the contours of an atmosphere of restraint in the fifth century. The community placed social restrictions on personal representation, but it needed leaders, and the elite desired recognition. In this context, the emerging concept of death for the city offered the elite a means to obviate criticism of portraits through demonstrated civic service. Posthumous portraits of men and portraits in votive reliefs engaged in different ways with the value of self-sacrifice represented by “the fallen.” Individuals and families used such images to reclaim the memory of the dead, to encode and remember the character—ēthos—of the deceased, and to partake in political debates. A case study of Kimon illustrates how families could use portraits informed by the “beautiful death” to rehabilitate the memories of the dead.

Civic engagement · Political science · Politics · Classical Antiquity Studies · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health · Interdisciplinary Studies: Technology, Society, and Humanities · Law