0763ANCIENTOrestes_FlorenceSarcophagus

Orestes' trial signifies the mortal travail of the deceased, whose duty to divine urgings earned expiation from even heinous crimes. (Cf. A.M. McCann, Roman Sarcophagi in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1978), 53 - 60. McCann knows 13 other Orestes sarcophagi, but not the Florence specimen.)

Zanker and Ewald know 29 "or so" surviving Orestes sarcophagi in two classes: 16 show Orestes killing his mother, 13 focus on the episode with Iphigenia among the Taurians. All are from the Antonine period. Class 1 creates "a strangely ambivalent image of the dissolution and destruction of the family structure, which is apparently how the patron of the sarcophagus regarded death." (P. Zanker and B.C. Ewald, Living with Myths: the imagery of Roman sarcophagi (Oxford 2012), p. 379.