The first part of this paper briefly reviews current theories as to the origins of the Classical style, and proposes an alternative approach. The second part, making use of some rather neglected pieces of literary evidence, attempts to reconstruct the circumstances in which this distinctive sculptural style was created, and presents it in a new light: as the ingenious solution to a specific artistic problem which confronted fifth-century Greek sculptors as a result of their final rejection of archaic stylization.

A remarkable blue-grey marble horse with a white marble rider, found in the Basilica at Aphrodisias, has been a focus of recent research. The article describes the archaeology and history of the monument — how it can be reconstructed, with its base and in its precise setting in the Basilica. The group was a daring composition that had already fallen and been restored once in antiquity. What emerges is firstly a new full-size hellenistic-style statue group whose subject can be identified as Troilos and Achilles, and secondly a striking example of the long second lives of classical statues in Late Antiquity. The horse was a great public monument of the early imperial period that was moved to the Basilica probably in the mid-fourth century a.d., where it has a well-documented context. The subject of the group can be identified both from epigraphy and from its iconographic antecedents, and its version of the subject can be related to a particular strand in the rich later literary representations of the story.1

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To the north east of Balboura, on the far side of the stream-bed, lie the ruins of an imposing tomb (see Fig. 1), the largest and most elaborate so far discovered in the area. Built directly on and partly into the hillside, the building was oriented to look straight across the valley towards the city (orientation: 27° E of true north—see Fig. 2; i.e. the tomb faces approx. SSW); and apparently it stood in splendid isolation, at some distance from the other tombs of the northern necropolis, and on somewhat higher ground. The remains of another tomb of similar type, but of smaller dimensions, can be seen across the valley in the neighbouring cemetery; and a third faces the city from the slopes to the south.Although at first sight there seems to be little of the building left in place Pl. 1 (a, b); Fig. 2), enough remains for us to be fairly sure of its original form. It was built on two levels: above, standing on a stepped podium, a monumental building designed to house large stone sarcophagi—a structure most often described in inscriptions throughout Asia. Minor as a heroön (and for convenience so designated here); and below, within the podium, a lower chamber or crypt, often referred to in inscriptions as a hyposorion, normally intended for the various dependants of those entombed above. The building was constructed from the local white limestone; and while certainly the most ambitious sepulchral monument yet known from Balboura, it shows a relatively simple design, and the same rather rough-and-ready workmanship as the other buildings of the site.

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