An Unpublished Greek "Grave" Relief in the Brooks Museum: Contextualizing Banquet Scenes within the Votive and Funerary Landscapes of Late Classical Attica

Numerous marble reliefs with figural scenes featuring a reclining male banqueter were dedicated in Classical Greece during the late fifth to fourth centuries BCE. An unpublished relief from the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art is an interesting and little-known example of this type. Most such reliefs have been identified as modest funerary monuments representing the deceased at his funerary banquet and have been classified as examples of the “Totenmahl” or “death feast”. Although the Brooks Relief has been identified as a grave monument to date, this thesis demonstrates that it is, in fact, a different kind of votive relief produced in Athens in the fourth century BCE. How this marble relief would have been contextually displayed, identified, and interpreted by audiences as a dedication to a local hero, Eudotei, in Attica in the southern region of Laureion in the Late Classical period is examined.