Cut These Words into My Stone

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Anonymous Epitaphs of No Known Date

Anonymous epitaphs and dedications are among the earliest surviving examples of Greek writing. Rudimentary samples appear concurrently with the invention of the alphabet, in the middle of the eighth century BCE. Chiseled on pillars, incised on votive tablets and funerary pottery, these spare metered memorials, often just one line long, provided the basis for a much later invention, the literary epigram. No one knows who wrote them. No one is sure of their age.

Many cultures have marked their graves with commonplace sentiments. The best of the Greek epitaphs are different. Small vivid time capsules, they convey their brief testaments with surprising directness, in voices that frequently possess a modern ring. Many, perhaps most, Greek epitaphs are lost. Those that survive range widely across Greek society. Even in this slim selection, we meet soldiers, sailors, generals, admirals, philosophers, poets, priests, playwrights, paupers, fishermen, farmers, physicians, merchants, elders, infants, teachers, musicians, astronomers, tyrants, virgins, misers, undertakers, drunks, tycoons, crones, slaves, actors, dolphins, horses, insects, and farm animals, as well as people of no clear rank or occupation. Reading good Greek epitaphs, we learn a little something of Greek life. They show us, not merely how people died, but how they lived and what they cared about. And they accomplish this with an intimacy rare in Greek literature. They are vivid, not morbid.

Despite their size, Greek epitaphs by definition address eternal questions. What is a good death? What is tragic loss? What can be said of a loved one? What may be said of a stranger? Such range in so few words is extraordinary. One of the oldest samples, carved on a stone depicting a horse and rider (perhaps about to be thrown), memorializes a young man’s exuberance while expressing the circularity of physical existence:

After many high times with friends my age,

I am back in the earth I sprang from:

Aristocles. Menon’s son. From Piraeus.

The sentiments expressed in the better Greek epitaphs are down to earth and genuine, only rarely arch or overly clever. By their emotional directness, they often achieve the clear simplicity of fine writing. When read in numbers, they compose a frank, human frieze depicting a world lost in time, yet familiar.

Though produced to honor the dead, Greek epitaphs may be arrestingly candid. When cast in the first person, the deceased seem to speak for themselves. Some are wryly funny—like the one for the comic actor Philistion (page 7), who played dying men on stage, “but never quite like this.” Others are less pointedly ironic. The words of the suicide on page 11, for instance, are so understated that a reader may have to scan them twice to grasp their meaning—that the smile he wears in death is not an expression of good humor but a result of the muscle-constricting poison he chose to swallow.

Greek epitaphs deploy a rich variety of tones — stately, frank, comforting, heartfelt, heroic, ironic, lamenting, proud. In those that are actual tombstone verses, the voice of a family or third party may lurk in the background. On page 9, the young girl speaking in the first-person makes a flat statement: “I will be known as a virgin for all time.” The disappointment expressed is really her parents’—that she died childless. Their lament, free of false comfort, conveys an honest solace of its own. Or, take the bleak remarks of the man from Tarsus on page 8, who never married and wishes his father hadn’t married either. Were these lines approved by the deceased before his death, or did someone compose them later? A person who knew him? A professional epigrammatist in the pay of a disgruntled neighbor? Spoken in first-person, the lines sum up a state of mind that readers in any age may recognize.

In Greek literature’s infancy, centuries before the invention of scrolls and libraries, anonymous tombstone epitaphs offered passersby some of the first individual reading experiences in Western history. Utilitarian in purpose, their deeper inspiration springs from the urge to commemorate individuals and render them indelible, whether a local hero or a loved one.

Anonymous

I, the actor, Philistion

Soothed men’s pain with comedy and laughter.

A man of parts, I often died

But never quite like this.

τν πολυστνακτον νθρπων βον

γλωτι κερσας Νικαες Φιλιστων

νταθα κεμαι, λεψανον παντς βου,

πολλκις ποθανν, δε δ’ οδεπποτε.

Anonymous

My name is Dionysius of Tarsus.

I was sixty when I died. I never married.

I wish my father hadn’t married either.

ξηκοντοτης Διονσιος νθδε κεμαι,

Ταρσες, μ γμας· αθε δ μηδ’ πατρ.

Anonymous

Phrasikleia’s headstone says:

I will be called a virgin for all time.

This title I won from the gods

Instead of marriage.

— Fashioned by Aristion of Paros

Σμα Φρασικλεας· κορη κεκλσομαι αε

ντ γμου παρ θεν τοτο λαχοσ’ νομα.

ριστων Πρι[ος μ’ π][η]σε.

Lines on a Pillar Depicting Amphareté
Holding Her Grandchild

I hold my daughter’s young one lovingly,
The one I held on my knee while we were living,
Back in the days when we blinked at the bright

sun —

The one I still hold here, though we have vanished.

Τκνον μς θυγατρς τδ’ χω φλον, μπερ τ’

αγς

μμασιν ελο ζντες δερκμεθα,

χον μος γνασιν κα νν φθμενον φθιμνη ’χω.

Anonymous

I, unhappy Sophocles,
Entered Death’s house grinning
Because I swallowed Sardinian celery
(A poison that contracts the lips).
And so I died, and others otherwise,
But all of us somehow or other.

νθδ’ γ Σοφοκλς στυγερν δμον δος σβην

κμμορος, εδατι Σαρδ σελνοιο γελσκων.

ς μν γν, τεροι δ’ λλως· πντες δ τε πντως.

Anonymous

The way to the underworld is straight,
Whether one starts from Athens or the Nile.
Don’t worry about dying far from home.
A fair breeze blows from every quarter
Right to the land of the dead.

Ες δην θεα κατλυσις, ετ’ π’ θηνν

στεχοις, ετε νκυς νσεαι κ Μερης.

μ σ γ’ νιτω πτρης ποτλε θανντα·

πντοθεν ες φρων ες δην νεμος.

Anonymous

I am dead, yet I await you.
You will wait for someone else.
In the land of the dead
A single death waits for everybody.

Κτθανον, λλ μνω σε· μενες δ τε κα σ

τιν’ λλον·

πντας μς θνητος ες δης δχεται.

Anonymous

If good people survive once life is over,
Living on as speech in the mouths of men,
Then you, Andreas, thrive and are not dead.
A divine place with the sacred deathless ones
Awaits you, now that your work is done.

Ε γνος εσεβων ζει μετ τρμα βοιο,

ναιετον κατ θεσμν ν στμα φωτς κστου,