2nd century AD. A marble fragment from a figurative gravestone or sarcophagus, divided into two sections: an upper register showing a hunting scene, with the left leg of the hunter visible and part of his spear wounding what seems to be the hunted animal, a hunting dog below; the lower register representing naked male and female figures behind the well-preserved figure of a horse. See Mendel, G., Catalogue des sculptures grecques, romaines et byzantines, Constantinople, 1914, no.4 (2100), vol.I,p.3ff. for a possible analogy. 923 grams, 17cm (6 1/2"). From a North Yorkshire collection formed since the 1980s; thence by descent. The fragment could be related to the myth of the Greek hero Meleager, the hunter and killer of the Calydonian Boar, maybe the subject of the upper scene; in the lower scene the hero could be portrayed besides the fierce huntress Atalanta, who he loved. [No Reserve]

Fair condition.