Sarcophagus with the Slaughter of the Niobids

For centuries the Romans had mostly cremated their dead and kept the ashes in urns. In the 2nd century AD burial of the body became the custom in Rome, and with it came carved marble coffins, many of them covered with Greek myths. Families often picked stories of sudden death, and few are harsher than this one. Niobe, a queen of Thebes, scorned the goddess Leto for having only two children, and Leto's twins, Apollo and Artemis, shot down all of hers.

Here Artemis takes aim at the daughters and Apollo at the sons, while the children fall across the whole front. On the lid above, the dead are laid out side by side in a long row.

The sarcophagus front was found beside the Via Appia, the road leading south from Rome that was lined with tombs. It belonged to the Torlonia, a Roman family of bankers, and came to Munich in 1828. Scholars date it to the 160s AD.