Hellenistic Relief Molds from the Athenian Agora

Over 100 clay molds found between 1931 and 1977 in the fills within the three great Hellenistic stoas that once lined the Agora (the Middle Stoa, the Stoa of Attalos, and the South Stoa) are published in this book. While the repertory of images that could have been cast using them, comprising 25 subjects, is relatively conventional, the large size (up to 30 x 60 cm) makes their function a puzzle. The author concludes that they must have been for the casting of cheap funerary substitutes at a time when a decree of Demetrios of Phaleron prohibited the building of costly burial monuments in Athens. After the author's death in 1982, this volume was edited by Eileen Markson and Susan I. Rotroff.