The Death of the Maiden in Classical Athens

For an Athenian family, the death of a daughter before marriage was more than a private loss. It brought to an end a life that had not reached the adult roles expected of her, and it demanded rituals and images through which relatives could make sense of what had happened. Katia Margariti sets funerary reliefs and painted vases beside burial evidence, inscriptions, tragedy and myth to investigate how Classical Athens represented these untimely deaths.

The evidence does not speak with one voice. Grave reliefs often idealise the young woman and her bond with her family, while vase imagery gives more space to grief and burial rites. Margariti also questions the familiar assumption that the loutrophoros marked only the graves of the unmarried. This 694-page research publication reproduces her Greek-language doctoral thesis, with catalogues and illustrations and a substantial 63-page English summary; it is not a fully translated English monograph.