A pseudepitaphic habit in two epigrams by Lucillius
AP 11.135
μηκέτι, μηκέτι, Μάρκε, τὸ παιδίον, ἀλλ᾽ ἐμὲ κόπτου
τὸν πολὺ τοῦ παρὰ σοὶ νεκρότερον τεκνίου,
εἰς ἐμὲ νῦν ἐλέγους ποίει πάλιν, εἰς ἐμὲ θρήνους,
δήμιε, τὸν στιχίνῳ σφαζόμενον θανάτῳ,
τοῦ σοῦ γὰρ πάσχω νεκροῦ χάριν, οἷα πάθοιεν
οἱ καταδείξαντες βιβλία καὶ καλάμους.
Marcus,
enough — leave off about ‘the boy’;
Grieve not for him, but for your reader, me,
Whom you leave stone-cold dead — deader by far
Than your ‘wee bairn’. So make me elegies,
You public hangman — sing for me your dirge,
Who lie a victim of your murderous line.
What I endure for sake of ‘the deceased’,
I wish upon whoever first devised
The book-rolls and the pens of authorship.
AP 11.312
οὐδενὸς ἐνθάδε νῦν τεθνηκότος, ὦ παροδῖτα,
Μάρκος ὁ ποιητὴς ᾠκοδόμηκε τάφον,
καὶ γράψας ἐπίγραμμα μονόστιχον, ὧδ᾽ ἐχάραξε:
‘κλαύσατε δωδεκέτη Μάξιμον ἐξ Ἐφέσου.’
οὐδὲ γὰρ εἶδον ἐγώ τινα Μάξιμον: εἰς δ᾽ ἐπίδειξιν
ποιητοῦ κλαίειν τοῖς παριοῦσι λέγω.
This tomb contains no body, wayfarer:
Marcus the poet built it as a place
To carve his one-line epitaph, to wit:
‘Weep: Maximus, twelve years, from Ephesus.’
I saw no ‘Maximus’, but, passer-by,
Behold my poet. He should make you cry.
Cf. e.g. Lucillius AP 11.133 and 134:
Eutychides the lyricist is dead!
You denizens of underworld, now flee:
Eutychides is coming, with his songs.
He ordered twelve guitars upon his pyre,
And five-and-twenty cases of his tunes.
Now Charon has you in his grip indeed:
Where in the future might a person go,
When even in the kingdom of the dead
Eutychides is inescapable?
Heliodorus, shall we now begin?
Shall we now banter verses back and forth?
Still keen? ‘Come close, that swifter to death’s door’ —
You’ll find in me so dense a bullshitter
That you will be out-Heliodorified.
εὐθὺ κατακλύζεις ἐπιγράμμασιν: Lucillius AP 11.137
When Narva asks a friend to dine,
He gives a pint of tavern wine,
A musty loaf and stinking ham,
Then overwhelms with epigram.
A kinder fate Apollo gave
Who whelm’d beneath the Tyrrhene wave
The impious rogues that stole his kine.
Oh, Narva, let their lot be mine.
Or if no river’s near your cell,
Show me at least your deepest well. – tr. J. H. Merivale
Callimachus AP 7.447
σύντομος ἦν ὁ ξεῖνος: ὃ καὶ στίχος: οὐ μακρὰ λέξω:
‘Θῆρις Ἀρισταίου, Κρὴς ἐπ᾽’ ἐμοὶ δολιχός.
The man was short; so will this poem be.
‘Thēris, a Cretan, Aristaeus’ son.’
That was a slog enough, it seemed to me.
Callimachus AP 6.149
φησὶν ὅ με στήσας Εὐαίνετος – οὐ γὰρ ἔγωγε
γιγνώσκὠ – νίκης ἀντί με τῆς ἰδίης
ἀγκεῖσθαι χάλκειον ἀλέκτορα Τυνδαρίδῃσι:
πιστεύω Φαίδρου παιδὶ Φιλοξενίδεω.
The man who set me here, Euaenetus,
Assures us (for I cannot tell myself)
That I am hung here for a victory,
His own, and I a cockerel made of brass,
And dedicated to the Tyndarids.
I trust the son of Phaedrus, he in turn
Being the offspring of Philoxenus.
ψεύστης δ᾽ οὗτος ἔπεστι λίθος: Leonidas <of Tarentum> AP 7.273
The hard and hasty squall from out the East;
The dark of night; the swell Orion sent
As he descended darkly out of view:
These did for me, Callaeschrus. Off I slipped,
Dead as I cleaved across the Libyan main.
Spun in the sea as food for fish I roam;
‘Here lies’ is lies. Nobody is at home.
From the tomb of Quintus Sulpicius Maximus
Ἐπιγράμματα.
Μοῦνος ἀπ’ αἰῶνος δυοκαίδεκα παῖς ἐνιαυτῶν
Μάξιμος ἐξ ἀέθλων εἰς ̓Αίδην ἔμολον·
νοῦσος καὶ κάματός με διώλεσαν· οὔτε γὰρ ἠοῦς,
οὐκ ὄρφνης μουσέων ἐκτὸς ἔθηκα φρένα.
λίσσομαι ἀλλὰ στῆθι δεδουπότος εἵνεκα κούρου,
ὄφρα μάθῃς σχεδίου γράμματος εὐεπίην,
εὐφήμου καὶ λέξον ἀπὸ στόματος τόδε μοῦνον
δακρύσας· εἴης χῶρον ἐς Ἠλύσιον·
ζωούσας ἔλιπες γὰρ ἀηδόνας, ἃς Ἀιδωνεὺς
οὐδέποθ’ αἱρήσει τῇ φθονερῇ παλάμῃ.
Βαιὸν μὲν τόδε σῆμα, τὸ δὲ κλέος οὐρανὸν ἵκει,
Μάξιμε, Πειερίδων ἐξέο λειπομένων,
νώνυμον οὐδέ σε Μοῖρα κατέκτανε νηλεόθυμος,
ἀλλ’ ἔλιπεν λήθης ἄμμορον εὐεπίην.
οὔτις ἀδακρύτοισι τεὸν παρὰ τύμβον ἀμείβων
ὀφθαλμοῖς σχεδίου δέρξεται εὐστιχίην.
ἄρκιον ἐς δόλιχον τόδε σοι κλέος· οὐ γὰρ ἀπευθὴς
κείσεαι, οὐτιδανοῖς ἰδόμενος νέκυσι,
πουλὺ δὲ καὶ χρυσοῖο καὶ ἠλέκτροιο φαεινοῦ
ἔσ(σ)ετ’ ἀεὶ κρέσσων ἣν ἔλιπες σελίδα.
Uniquely, though I was but a twelve-year-old boy, Maximus, left the Games and went into Hades. Disease and exhaustion destroyed me: never at dawn or in the evening I set my mind outside the realm of the Muses. Pause here, I pray you, for the sake of this poor boy, and see the beauty of this extemporaneous poem, and speak with pure lips through falling tears, this single prayer: ‘Go to the Elysian land. For you have left here living nightingales, which Hades shall never seize with his envious hand.’
This is only a small memorial, but the fame shall reach heaven, Maximus, the fame of the Pierian poetry left behind by you. Fate that has no pity, did not obliterate you without a name, but left behind beautiful verse that takes no share in oblivion. Nobody who comes to your tomb will look without tears. at the beautiful rows of your impromptu composition. This glory is secure, for you, for a long time; you do not lie here unknown, like the dead of no account. The column of poetry you left behind will forever be far more precious than gold and shining amber. – tr. B. Graziosi
[here's a link to a page with the comic panel and some more info about From Hell]
Gideon Nisbet, University of Birmingham
¨ Bruss, J. S. (2006), Hidden Presences: Monuments, Gravesites, and Corpses in Greek Funerary Epigram (Leuven).
¨ Floridi, L. (2014), Lucillio, ‘Epigrammi’: Introduzione, Testo Critico, Traduzione E Commento (Berlin).
¨ Floridi, L. (2022), ‘Embedded epigrams in epigrams: inscriptional voices in erotic and scoptic poems’, AevAnt 22: 71-85.
¨ Garulli, V. (2018), ‘A portrait of the poet as a young man: the tomb of Quintus Sulpicius Maximus on the Via Salaria’, 83-100 in Nora Goldschmidt and Barbara Graziosi (eds.), Tombs of the Ancient Poets: Between Literary Reception and Material Culture (Oxford).
¨ Lucci, J. M. (2015), Hidden in Plain Sight: Martial and the Greek Epigrammatic Tradition (PhD thesis, University of Pennsylvania).
¨ Meyer, D. (2007), ‘The act of reading and the act of writing in Hellenistic epigram’, 185-210 in P. Bing and J. S. Bruss (eds.), Brill’s Companion to Hellenistic Epigram down to Philip (Leiden).
¨ Meyer, D. (2019), ‘Tears and emotions in Greek literary epitaphs’, 176-91 in M. Kanellou, I. Petrovic, and C. Carey (eds.), Greek Epigram from the Hellenistic to the Early Byzantine Era (Oxford).
¨ Moore, A. and Campbell, E. (1989-98), From Hell: Being a Melodrama in Sixteen Parts
¨ Neger, M. (2018), ‘Immanent genre theory in Greek and Roman epigram’, 179-94 in C. Henriksén (ed.), A Companion to Ancient Epigram (Hoboken NJ).
¨ Nisbet, G. (2003), Greek Epigram in the Roman Empire: Martial’s Forgotten Rivals (Oxford).
¨ Nisbet, G. (tr.) (2020), Epigrams from the Greek Anthology (Oxford).
¨ Paduano, G. (1993), ‘Chi dice io nell’ epigramma ellenistico?’, 129-40 in A. Graziano and M. Franco (eds.), La componente autobiografica nella poesia greca e latina fra realtá e artificio letterario: atti del convegno Pisa 16-17 maggio 1991 (Pisa).
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