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More than two-thirds of the more than four hundred Etruscan urns examined are decorated with sculpture based on Greek tragedy, and in nearly all instances the drama was Euripidean. Such are the instructive facts regarding this important class of monuments.

Under the expression ‘Roman sarcophagi’ one understands those of the first and second centuries A.D. unless the expression is further qualified. Sarcophagi from the time of the Republic are very rare and they are withal modest in their workmanship. The florid decorations of the time of the Empire, and especially of the period just noted, are often of secondary interest, but the reliefs on the sarcophagi are for the most part of prime importance, as furnishing reminiscences of lost tragedies and ancient paintings of great renown. The majority are copies of very ordinary merit, while now and then a sarcophagus relief is not unworthy a Greek artist of the fourth century B.C.

It is a commonly known fact that long before the Laokoön, or the Farnese Bull, or the Apollo Belvidere was unearthed in the sixteenth and fifteenth centuries—long before the classical antiquities of Rome, Florence, and Naples had attracted students and lovers of art—the sculptures of these sarcophagi, scattered about in cathedrals and palaces, had begun to teach the Italian artist what the human figure really is, and what composition and decoration should be. The Renaissance artist first learned the charm and simplicity of the ancient costume from these marbles and perceived how vastly superior this was to the heavy, conventional church-dress that concealed the outlines of the form and rendered grace and beauty impossible. The study of the antique, we have reason to believe, was in the early Renaissance largely a study of these Roman sarcophagi.