Unless otherwise noted, all references are to The Greek Anthology, William Roger Paton, translator, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Volumes I–V, cited by book and poem numbers.
Page 7: 7.155. The epitaph appears in the Anthology in a tract of poems attributed to Isidorus of Aegae, sixth century BCE. The actual century of its composition is uncertain.
Page 8: 7.309.
Page 9: Paul Friedländer, with Herbert B. Hoffleit, Epigrammata: Greek Inscriptions in Verse from the Beginnings to the Persian Wars. Ares Publishers, 1948, 1987, no. 80.
Page 10: Christopher W. Clairmont, Gravestone and Epigram: Greek Memorials from the Archaic and Classical Period. Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1970, no. 23. This late-fifth-century BCE pillar is in the Kerameikos Museum in Athens.
Page 11: 7.621. Sardinian celery: Ranunculus sardous. According to the American poet Keith Waldrop, “a poisonous herb, whose bitter taste could draw the lips back in a grin or sarcastic snarl, sardonic, like a dog’s.” See A Windmill Near Calvary, University of Michigan Press, 1968, p. 21.
Page 12: 10.3.
Page 13: 7.342.
Page 14: 7.673.
Page 15: 11.442. Peisistratus reigned at Athens from 547 to 527 BCE. The epitaph is said to have been inscribed on a statue of the tyrant at Athens. Page says the epitaph is not dateable (D. L. Page, Further Greek Epigrams, Cambridge University Press, 1981, p. 339).
Page 16: Friedländer, no. 135. This appears to be the oldest extant epitaph composed in elegiac couplets. Its four verses stood on a pillar along the main road running to Athens through the suburb of Sepolia. It seems to date from 575–550 BCE.
Page 17: Clairmont, no. 24, plate 12. Another very old example, the lines accompany a gravestone cameo depicting an exuberant horse and its youthful rider (perhaps about to be thrown).
Page 18: 7.325. Sardanapallus: The epitaph reads well on its own but rests on a complex allusion. In Greek legend, Sardanapallus, the last in a line of thirty kings of Assyria, was emblematic of the scandalous and slothful life. Herodotus, Ctesias, Diodorus Siculus, Aristophanes and others tell his story or allude to him. Aristotle cites him as an example of the lowest category of human existence, the “Life of Enjoyment,” suitable only for beasts. In 682 BCE Sardanapallus’s capital Nineveh was besieged. Two years into the siege, the Tigris River undermined his palace walls. Rather than live as a captive, he collected his wives and his treasure and set fire to them and himself.
Page 19: 7.84. The pre-Socratic Thales of Miletus (624–546 BCE) was the first Greek thinker to define general principles, set forth hypotheses, study electricity, and much else. Aristotle called him the first philosopher.
Page 27: 7.489.
Page 28: 7.153.
Page 29: 7.160.
Page 30: 7.226. Abdera: A coastal city in northeastern Greece, and the birthplace of Democritus.
Page 31: 7.677. The night before the battle, Megistias foretold his own death. The Spartan general Leonidas urged him to depart; Megistias sent away his only son but stayed with the army, and perished the next day. Forty years later, the historian Herodotus quotes this poem (Bk. 7.228) and tells us that Simonides, a friend of Megistias, had the epitaph set up at Thermopylae in memoriam.
Page 32: 7.248. The epitaph was inscribed on a monument dedicated to all the Greeks who fell while attempting to hold the pass against an invading Persian army at Thermopylae in 480 BCE. The size of the Persian army is exaggerated here ten times or more. The size of the Greek defense, which included about a thousand Spartan slaves, is accurate.
Page 33: 7.249. The epitaph was inscribed on a common monument to all those Spartans who fell while attempting to resist the invading Persian army at Thermopylae in 480 BCE. Leonidas, Sparta’s king, led the allied Greeks. When an informer betrayed them, Leonidas remained with a small contingent in a heroic defense of the pass. All died. A hero cult was established at Sparta around this effort.
Page 34: 7.348.
Page 35: 7.507 (a).
Page 36: 7.254 (a).
Page 37: 7.280.
Page 38: 7.532.
Page 39: 7.346. Sabinus: Admiral of the Corinthian fleet.
Page 40: D. L. Page. Further Greek Epigrams. Cambridge University Press. 1981, 131.
Page 41: 7.265.
Page 42: 7.268. Minos: A legendary king of Crete, a great lawgiver, he was made a judge in Hades.
Page 43: 7.669.
Page 52: 7.295.
Page 54: 7.665.
Page 55: 6.226.
Page 56: 7.740.
Page 57: 7.731.
Page 58: 7.655.
Page 59: 7.273.
Page 60: 7.283.
Page 61: 6.298. This satirical poem plays on a popular genre of dedicatory verse, in which professionals upon retirement dedicate the tools of their trade to an appropriate deity, hanging them up in the deity’s temple. A soldier would hang his sword and shield in the temple of Ares, for example. In time, the genre developed an ironical turn: the old woman, once a beauty, dedicates her mirror to Aphrodite, etc. In Leonidas’s poem, the ascetical Cynic has done without to the point of starvation. He cannot celebrate his “success,” so Hunger does it for him, hanging his few belongings in a bush.
Page 62: 7.408.
Page 63: 7.452. Eubulus: The name of a fourth century BCE writer of comedies. In one fragment, he has Dionysus, the “god of wine,” recommend restraint in drinking. The use of this name, here, may be a reference.
Page 64: 7.455.
Page 65: 7.170. He’s sleeping still: The epitaph may have been carved into the base of a stone depicting a woman holding a child.
Page 66: 7.538.
Page 67: 7.202.
Page 68: 7.190.
Page 69: 7.215.
Page 70: 7.208.
Page 71: 7.212.
Page 72: 7.718.
Page 73: 7.414. Rhinthon: A third-century BCE author who specialized in so-called “satyr” plays. These often followed the performance of a tragic trilogy, providing an element of comic relief. Of his thirty-eight plays, fragments of eight survive, six of which are burlesques of tragedies by Euripides.
Page 74: 7.650.
Page 75: 7.415.
Page 76: 7.451.
Page 77: 7.447.
Page 78: 7.453.
Page 79: 7.471. The treatise mentioned here is Plato’s Phaido, on the death of Socrates. One of the three charges for which the Athenian Assembly condemned Socrates to death was the corruption of youth.
Page 80: 7.454. The ancient Greeks considered it barbaric to drink undiluted wine. They had no beer or distilled spirits.
Page 81: 7.524. There are three voices here. The visitor queries the headstone, which replies once. The visitor then queries Charidas, the deceased, who replies four times. Pluto was god of the netherworld.
Page 82: 7.520.
Page 83: 7.728.
Page 84: 7.271.
Page 85: 7.277.
Page 86: 7.80. One poem survives by Heracleitus of Halicarnassus. See page 95.
Page 87: 7.544.
Page 88: 7.481.
Page 89: 7.735.
Page 90: 7.410.
Page 91: 7.276.
Page 92: 7.545. As this epitaph points out, the road to the Grecian underworld divided into a right-hand path that led good souls down to Elysium and a left-hand path for those less worthy, who went to sufferings in Tartarus. Hades’ three judges, Minos, Rhadamanthus, and Aeacus, met the dead at a crossroads and passed judgment. See The Odyssey 4.564, Pindar’s Olympian Ode 2.75, and Virgil’s Aeneid, 6.540 ff., for various descriptions.
Page 93: 7.444.
Page 94: 7.499.
Page 95: 7.465.
Page 96: 7.315. Timon: A legendary misanthrope, often typecast in opposition to traditional Greek values. In the epitaphs especially, where friendship and sociability are routinely praised, Timon stands for the complete rejection of fellow human beings. Concerning his demise, the unspoken conclusion for a Greek may have been, “He won’t be missed.”
Page 97: 7.282.
Page 98: 7.546.
Page 99: 7.260.
Page 100: 7.533.
Page 101: 7.469.
Page 102: 7.721.
Page 103: 7.232.
Page 104: 7.8.
Page 106: 7.413. Atalanta: A mythic outdoorswoman famous for her speed. She raced Hippomenes, who distracted her by strewing golden apples in her way, winning the race and her hand in marriage.
Page 107: 7.173.
Page 113: 7.543. Paton remarks: “Pliny (N.H. X.13) tells of ships being similarly sunk by flocks of quails alighting on them at night.”
Page 114: 7.417 and 7.419. Meleager wrote several epitaphs for himself. This free version, by no means a line-for-line translation, is based on 7.417 but omits a few phrases, combining others from 7.419.
Page 116: 7.182.
Page 117: 7.482.
Page 118: 7.365.
Page 119: 7.299.
Page 120: 7.211.
Page 121: 7.400.
Page 122: 7.634.
Page 123: 7.399. Sons of Oedipus: The poem may describe a painting or refer to a pair of latter-day Greeks whose enmity resembled the legendary brothers cited here. In any case, the story being recalled concerns Oedipus’s two sons, who, cursed by their father, went on wrangling even after death.
Page 124: 7.457.
Page 126: 7.376.
Page 127: 9.74. Achaemenides and Menippus: The two names reflect the extremes of society. The first signifies Persian royalty. The second was a common Greek name. Gow and Page date this anonymous piece by placing it, as here, between Antiphilus and Antipater of Thessalonica in the first century CE.
Page 128: 7.18. Alcman: Seventh-century BCE poet, author of the earliest choral lyrics. Alcman worked in Sparta but may have hailed from Sardis in present-day western Turkey. Except for a few fragments, his six books are lost.
Page 129: 7.398.
Page 130: 7.639.
Page 131: 7.402.
Page 132: 7.693.
Page 133: 7.378.
Page 134: 7.224.
Page 135: 7.381.
Page 136: 7.548.
Page 137: 11.159.
Page 138: 11.192.
Page 139: 11.264.
Page 140: 11.113.
Page 141: 7.394.
Page 142: 7.324.
Page 147: J. W. Mackail. Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology. Longmans, Green, 1908, III.liv.
Page 148: 7.96. The god was right to call you wise: Apollo’s oracle at Delphi told Socrates he was the wisest man in Greece.
Page 149: 7.744. The epitaph concerns a form of prophecy and fortune telling associated with bulls.
Page 150: 7.607.
Page 151: 10.82. Palladas wrote as a pagan in Byzantine Christian times. His theme here is the effeteness of an exhausted worldview.
Page 152: 7.582.
Page 153: 7.586.
Page 154: 7.576.
Page 155: 7.565.
Page 156: 9.677.
Page 157: 7.311. Answer to the riddle: Lot’s wife.
Page 158: 5.237. “I didn’t stop a dead young woman’s tongue …” Jay explains the extended allusion succinctly: “The Thracian king Tereus, husband of Prokne, cut out the tongue of his sister-in-law, Philomela, to prevent her accusing him of having raped her. Prokne’s revenge was to murder her young son by Tereus, Itylos, and to serve him to Tereus for dinner. Further disasters were averted by the gods, who intervened to turn Philomela into a nightingale, Prokne into a swallow, Itylos into a sandpiper, and Tereus into a hoopoe, a bird that nests among rocks” (Peter Jay, The Greek Anthology, rev. ed., Penguin Classics, 1981, p. 393). Here, the poet is telling the swallows of line 3 to trouble these others, victims of a violent mythic reality, and let him sleep with his fantasy, since he has brought no harm to the woman he loved.
Page 160: 7.553.
Page 161: 9.488.
Page 162: 11.282.