I'm not done with Woodward, the carolling epigrammatist, but here for a breather are some versions of epitaphs from Attica. They are numbered after the Greek originals in Peter Allen Hansen's Carmina Epigraphica Graeca (1983/1989, 2 vols), a wonderful resource.
Where known, Hansen tells us where the stones bearing the inscriptions were found. Poem 40's grave-marker was recovered from the wall of a church where it had been reused as masonry; poem 52's, from the wall built by Themistocles to protect the transport corridor between Athens and its harbour at Piraeus.
Poem 66 is followed by a credit to the stonemason who carved the image of the deceased on the funeral stela that bears the inscription.
40 (Attica, sixth century)
This tomb is famed abroad. Pisianax
Erected it for Damasistratus,
His son, for so is honour due the dead.
52 (Attica, sixth century)
Among the Samians a noble man
Is here entombed, son of Hēragoras,
Leōnax, far away from those he loved.
66 (Attica, sixth/fifth century)
Phi[ltiades of Sam]os here interred
Chaste Lampitō, far from her fatherland.
-Endoius was the artist
No comments:
Post a Comment