Two young heroes of Athens

These two epitaphs are among those collected in Hansen's Carmina Epigraphica Graeca. Both are from Athens in the late sixth century BC, and adorned marble bases on which stood statues of the deceased.

The first inscribed block was found where it belonged, in the ancient cemetery of the Ceramicus, the potters' quarter of Athens (hence our 'ceramic'). The second may well have begun in that same cemetery, but a century later it was carted off and built into the Themistoclean Wall near the Piraeus Gate, about a kilometer away. I make Nelo's tomb a 'mound' because in the context of burial the verb kheō means to pile up earth into a tumulus. It harks back to the heroic age, and I think the writer consciously echoes Homer and thereby seeks to associate the dead Xenophanes with the fallen heroes of the Iliad and Odyssey.

Nelonides literally means 'Son of Nelo'; the names may have swapped back and forth, generation to generation, until Nelonides' untimely death brought the cycle to a close.

41
This is the tomb of dead Xenophanes.
His father Cleoboulus built it here
To mark his excellence and modesty.
 
(on the left side: ‘Aristion of Paros made me’)
 
42
The son of Nelo, called Nelonides,
Is buried in the mound his father raised,
A fine memorial of his character.

(as a separate inscription: 'Endoius made this one too')