Like most of my other recent translations, these two epitaphs are from Richard Hunter's recently published and very fine Greek Epitaphic Poetry (poems XI and XIII). The first is from a gravestone (stēlē); the second, from the base of an equestrian statue raised in honour of the deceased.
Both poems hinge upon ancestry, expressed through the term rizē, literally 'root'; my versions have 'line', but 'stock' would have been closer.
Both poems also manage a change of voice partway through. The dead man is praised in the third person, then speaks for himself to those who pass by his monument.
From Laurion in fourth-century Attica, famous for its silver-mines:
Great-hearted Paphlagonian, he came
From the Black Sea; Atōtus was his name.
Far from that land he bade his body rest
From mortal toils. No other could contest
In crafting silver. I am of the line
Of bold Pylaemenes, who met his fate
Slain by the great Achilles in his hate.
From Pherae in Thessaly, third century BC, and surely commemorating a member of a mystery-cult :
They said that Lycophron, Philiscus’ son,
Was of great Zeus’s line — but truth to tell,
His origin was everlasting flame.
I live now in the starry firmament,
Raised up there by my father, while below
My mortal body rests beneath the earth
To which my own dear mother owed her birth.
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