Two grieving mothers

Two mothers lament their sons who died young. These two epitaphs are from Hunter's green-and-yellow. Both are Hellenistic in date. The first was found at Alexandria; the other is from Corcyra.

 

'The Strophades, "Turning Islands", were in legend where the sons of Boreas turned around and abandoned their pursuit of the Harpies... Strabo 8.4.2 identifies them as two islands in the open sea west of the Peloponese, roughly south of Zakynthos...

'Corcyra had been identified with the Homeric Scherie, land of Alcinous and Arete, at least since the fifth century' (Hunter).

XV

Philoxenus, your mother used to throw

Her arms around your neck for love of you

When finally you came, but never more;

Never again with age-mates will you go

Up to our hallowed city, and enjoy

The shaded floor of the gymnasium.

Instead your father brought your sun-bleached bones

And laid them in this tomb, since all your flesh

Was burned at Caunus in a raging pyre.

XVI

Calliope was puddled on this tomb;

Ten thousand tears in mourning for her son,

For Alexander who was swift to die

And left no issue when she laid him here

Beneath this earth, leaving the breath of life

At twenty-seven years, a cultured man,

Famed with the bow, whom murderous pirates slew

Hard by the ocean-girded Strophades.

But go now, traveller, and bid farewell

To a good man, good Satyrus’s son,

Born from the island that Alcinoüs won.