A lost bronze athlete

You crafted voice of marble, tell me true:
Who set this statue here to glorify
Apollo’s altar? Panamyes, he,
Casbōllis’ son, and if you press for more,
It was the tenth such gifted to his store.

Hansen CEG 429, a verse incription from the stone base of a bronze statue, early fifth BC. The base was found built into the city wall of Halicarnassus; the statue, like so many, will have been melted down. Its metal has wandered through centuries of coins, cannons and cooking-pots, and an odd atom of it may be within spitting-distance of you right now.

 Donald Lavigne writes compellingly about this dedicatory poem and how it evokes and interacts with the statue's surroundings in the temple precinct:

 This opening up of the context, the placement of this statue and its two voices into an implied dialogue with the other monuments there suggests the importance of the relationship between the dedications as a whole—a this implies a that. It is not one dedication, but many, that actualizes the power of and honor due to the god.  Similarly, Panamyes gains honor from his individual dedication, but also, through association and competition with those other great men of Halicarnassus who are sure to have left their mark there as well.  The context actualizes the honor of the god hinted at in the epigram, which itself focuses upon the honor of Panamyes; but, both external and internal honorand are inseparable and mutually reinforcing.

The Carian-named Panamyes son of Casbōllis went on to some kind of role as an official witness (Mnēmōn or 'Remembrancer') for his city; he is named on the contemporary 'Lygdamis Decree' stele, discussed by Edwin Carawan in a chapter of a volume edited by E. Anne Mackay (BMCR review here). Apollo was again the beneficiary, this time of the entire worldly goods of on any party who broke the terms of the agreement thereby promulgated. You can read an English translation of the decree here.

Readers who get it

I googled myself because I am shallow and vain. Here are some reviews of Epigrams from the Greek Anthology by non-classicist readers on goodreads. They are the favouritest reviews I've ever had.

 

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The cover will mislead you.

It is not an aesthetic, Pre-Raphaelite, typical classic poetry collection, sometimes it is pretty dumb. It is so dumb that I burst out laughing at night like nobody is alive. 

 
Of course it is about the gossip of gods, the heroic action of the semi-gods, the fight of the mortals, the decay of our body, the pathetic nature of humanity, the nobility of the saints, and gay porn. But they are all in one book (although originally it was 16 books), that's how tremendous this book is.

In fact, there are too much references and questions that I for one not sure how I can possibly finish the book with the confidence claiming I know all it says. I simply skipped all the notes as I don't think my goal is to be a Greek mythology and history expert. I'm here for the word play.

It is also surprisingly one of the most effective story tellings; some of the poems are so dramatic and complete that they could as well be the original flash fiction. It's the most surprising read of the year for me.

 

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Snapshots of an ancient world that was just like ours: replete with tourists, showoffs, and those torn up by love and grief. I’ll be honest: some of the most affecting of these are the pederastic ones; but there are excellent hetero sex and love poems here too. I also loved the dedicatory epigrams, through which tools praise the craftsmen who made or wielded them, and the epitaphs. Many of these are prefatory to, or otherwise hint at, lost works — another way in which the book opens its milieu to the modern reader. And it’s copiously rude, satirical, lowbrow.

 

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Nisbet’s translations into iambic pentameter are generally very fluent. He’s also a terrific annotator, going above and beyond in the introduction and, especially, the endnotes to really contextualise these condensed droplets of ancient human existence.

 

I'm not entirely sure what I expected from this book, but boi howdy, did it break my heart. There are some really funny poems in it and the erotic ones made me highly uncomfortable as I was on public transport, but the children ones... Just brace yourself if you don't want to read about the death of children, genuinely. Other than that I did really like this!