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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 03, No. 17, March, 1859 by Various
page 10 of 297 (03%)
I lost.

The figure of the sad youth leaning upon an inverted torch, in which
the Greeks embodied their idea of Death, is familiar to all who have
examined ancient Art. The Etruscan Death was a female, with wings upon
the shoulders, head, and feet, hideous countenance, terrible fangs and
talons, and a black skin. No example of the form attributed to him by
the early Christians has come down to us, that I can discover; but we
know that they, as well as the later Hebrews, considered Death as the
emissary of the Evil One, if not identical with him, and called him
impious, unholy. It was in the Dark Ages, that the figure of a dead body
or a skull was first used as a symbol of Death; but even then its office
appears to have been purely symbolic, and not representative;--that is,
these figures served to remind men of their mortality, or to mark a
place of sepulture, and were not the embodiment of an idea, not the
creation of a personage,--Death. It is not until the thirteenth or
fourteenth century that we find this embodiment clearly defined and
generally recognized; and even then the figure used was not a skeleton,
but a cadaverous and emaciated body.

Among the remains of Greek and Roman Art, only two groups are known in
which a skeleton appears; and it is remarkable that in both of these the
skeletons are dancing. In one group of three, the middle figure is a
female. Its comparative breadth at the shoulders and narrowness at the
hips make at first a contrary impression; but the position of the body
and limbs is, oddly enough, too like that of a female dancer of the
modern French school to leave the question in more than a moment's
doubt. Thus the artists who did not embody their idea of death in a
skeleton were the first to conceive and execute a real Dance of Death.
In both the groups referred to, the motive is manifestly comic; and
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