μα Φρασικλείας. | κόρε κεκλέσομαι | ἀιεί,In the following pages I examine memorials from the Archaic age, paying special attention to two exceptional pieces, the funerary monuments of the maiden Phrasikleia and of young Kroisos. These are representative examples of funerary korai and kouroi – splendid, idealized images that the aristocrats dedicated to their young people who died in the prime of life. This idealization should not surprise us, if we consider that as early as the Homeric poems, the funerary monument was referred to as the sema (although these early uses did not refer to statues); and this sema, together with kleos, fame, was all that remained of the deceased on earth. The two monuments selected are not only representative of youth memorials in the Archaic age, but also of funerary art from this period in general, since most funerary monuments of the time were raised by parents for their children, both sons and daughters, who died in their youth.1
The Archaic epigrams that I shall discuss here amply illustrate the different ways in which the epigrammatic texts, together with the funeral monument, engage the passer-by, the potential reader. As mentioned in the first chapter, the memorials were sited in public places and were intended to be seen. The meaning of the epigrams must be interpreted in light of the contextual information available: the material and spatial context, the religious context, the political context and the literary context. Clearly, not all of this information is present in all of the epigrams.2 Another key aspect is the kind of dialogue established between the epigram and the passer-by. For example, the speaker may be the monument itself, although it is sometimes hard to differentiate between the monument and the deceased; conversely, there are examples in which the deceased is the subject to whom the epigram is addressed. The speaker may also be an ‘anonymous mourner’ and the epigram phrased in the imperative, demanding that an ‘anonymous passer-by’ stop.3 As we shall see, it is not always easy to determine the subjects of the dialogue, but what is clear is that the funeral epigrams were meant to be read, rendering them something of a curiosity at a time when Greek literature was still an essentially oral form.
In cases where the complete memorial has survived, preserving both the inscription and the statue or stele, it is possible to establish how text and image complemented and mutually reinforced each other. The memorial to Phrasikleia, with which this chapter begins, is a perfect example: the epitaph explicitly states that the young woman has died before marriage, and this fact is echoed in the statue, where she is depicted adorned as a bride. The idea of representing a young woman who has died before marriage as a ‘bride of Hades’, only hinted at in the memorial to Phrasikleia, becomes explicit in a young woman’s epitaph from the island of Kos and dated to the end of the fourth century BC. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first instance of use of the expression ‘bride of Hades’.
The memorial to Kroisos, if the epitaph to Kroisos really does belong to the kouros found in Anavyssos, is as exceptional a case as that of Phrasikleia, since the entire funerary monument has been preserved together with its inscription. The epigram is a private epitaph for a young man killed in battle. In the corpus collected by Hansen, which forms the basis of my study, epigrams for the war dead account for almost one-seventh of the total. Together with death in childbirth and death at sea, death in battle is the exception to an unwritten rule whereby Archaic and Classical epitaphs did not indicate the cause of death. After the Persian Wars, private epitaphs for young men killed in combat were displaced by public epitaphs, the polyandria. However, memorials raised by parents to commemorate sons whose lives were cut short in battle, such as that of Kroisos, have survived from the sixth century BC, and especially the second half.
In this chapter devoted to the Archaic period, attention is also paid to the Brother and Sister stele, or the Stele of the Alcmaeonids. In this case, it is not a statue but a very well-conserved stele with a partially preserved inscription.
Hence, I will discuss a representative selection of Archaic memorials, mainly from Attica. As I noted in the first chapter, the erection of elaborate stelae in this region ceased in the early fifth century BC and did not resume until c. 430 BC. Although this kind of memorial continued to be constructed in other parts of Greece, I have taken Attica as my place of reference; consequently, this temporary gap is also reflected in the presentation of this study.
During the Archaic age, in addition to the monument’s deictic function, sema (σῆμα), a mnemonic function is gradually incorporated, mnema (μνῆμα, a term that never appears in Homer in reference to the funerary monument), corresponding to a growing interest in remembrance and fame.4 Jean-Pierre Vernant linked this fact to the heroic epic, observing that kouroi and stelai with reliefs develop particularly in the sixth century BC, and he sought to identify the social, psychological and aesthetic conditions that could have prompted such a change from primitive, non-iconic elements such as stones and columns. The epic song, with its social memory function, enabled the deceased to be remembered; now the erection of a funerary monument transforms the individual who has perished into a figure whose presence is thus engraved in the group memory. In Attica, these kouroi have a clearly aristocratic nature; they visually proclaim the young person’s glory just as epic poetry sang his feats: parole poetique (mémoire par l’oreille) in the former case, monument funéraire (mémoire par les yeux)5 in the latter. One indication of this heroization6 may also be found in the size of the monuments, no longer the ‘colossal’ images of that ‘divine stature’ spoken of in the literary texts and familiar to us in Daedalic-type sculptures. Instead, the statues are only slightly larger than life: The funerary statue of Phrasikleia, without its base, measures 1.71 metres, and the kouros found beside her measures 1.94 metres, the same as the Kroisos effigy.7 While giving credit to Vernant for emphasizing the move from an aniconic to an iconic monument, and for articulating this idea in relation to sixth-century BC aristocratic culture, it has been well understood by all scholars of antiquity that the funerary monument and poet’s verses had the greatest value in keeping alive the fame of the deceased.8
The kouros of a young male represented an elite youth, the kalos kai agathos youth of aristocracy. As for females, it seems that only women who died prior to marriage could display a kore over their tomb, a fact that reveals the special importance of parthenos in Ancient Greece, particularly when referring to maidens from the aristocratic group.9
Quite a small social circle is represented by those who receive such honours (always young people), given that few families could afford the expense of such monuments. Along these lines, it has been noted that a large number of Archaic memorials from Attica, dedicated to noble youths – sons and daughters of landholders from the time of Peisistratus and the Peisistratids – are not found in the large cemeteries near the capital, but in private burial grounds throughout Attica, probably near the demes where their respective families lived.10 The few surviving funerary monuments from this era with both image (statue or stele) and epigram have been associated with the Alcmaeonid family, as we shall see, although such hypotheses should be viewed with caution.
In contrast to the numerous kouroi, funerary korai are quite few in number,11 adding even more interest to the statue of the maiden Phrasikleia, found alongside a kouros that may be dedicated to her brother. Both belong to the most fully developed period of the Archaic style;12 and in the maiden’s case, we also have the epitaph that accompanied the statue. According to the inscription, the maiden receives from the gods the name of kore, in lieu of (ἀντί) marriage:
(i, on the front of the base)
σμα Φρασικλείας. | κόρε κεκλέσομαι | ἀιεί,
ἀντὶ γάμο | παρὰ θε ȏ ν τοῦτο | λαχ ȏ σ’ ὄνομα.
(ii, on the right side)
Ἀριστίον Πάρ
[ος μ’ ἐπ]ο[ίε]
ε.13
Tomb of Phrasikleia. Maiden is how I shall always be called,
instead of a marriage, from the gods I have attained this name.
In form, the epitaph is an elegiac couplet engraved without any separation between words, the oldest example of Attic inscription in stoichedon (στοιχηδόν), that is, with capital letters lined up both horizontally and vertically.14 A passer-by stopping before this image would lend his or her voice to the young Phrasikleia, or to her statue, as the epigram is somewhat ambiguous in this respect. The basic information (name and premature death before marriage) is clear in the epigram and is reinforced by the statue; the use of the first person adds pathos and engages the reader emotionally.
In the text we find an allusion to the Homeric ‘Hymn to Aphrodite’, where the poet refers to Hestia, one of the goddesses who are able to resist Aphrodite’s power. The virgin goddess is called kore (v. 21), and it is explicitly stated that Zeus granted this lovely geras in lieu of a wedding, anti gamoio (v. 29: τῇ δὲ πατὴρ Ζεὺς δῶκε καλὸν γέρας ἀντὶ γάμοιο). In Phrasiklea’s epitaph, lanchanein (λαγχάνειν), ‘receive as a batch’, belongs to the vocabulary of distribution, just as does geras, ‘honour’.15 In addition to the allusion to Hestia, there is also the obvious relationship to mythical Kore, the maiden daughter of Demeter.16 As a common noun, the use of kore in epitaphs does not seem to be random; on the contrary, it emphasizes youth and filiation, especially on the paternal side. It is obvious that a maiden who dies before marriage is also a parthenos, but the terms are not equivalent: As Pierre Chantraine notes, kore (κόρη) is often a synonym of thygater (θυγάτηρ), ‘daughter’, but is rarely a synonym for parthenos (παρθένος).17 If Phrasikleia had not been snatched away by death, her father would have been the one to arrange a suitable marriage for her.
As we shall see, the iconographic elements that stand out in this kore are typical of a bride, but for now I will only point out that Phrasikleia’s epitaph represents a very early example of the death–marriage association found in the case of maidens, not to become generalized until the Hellenistic period.18 The inscription on the base of the statue was published in 1828. Much later, in 1972, in the Attic deme of Myrrhinous (present-day Merenda), the sema was discovered, the statue of a maiden with her right arm extended alongside her body, her hand slightly pulling out the folds of the chiton tunic, and left forearm crossing her chest horizontally, holding a flower. She wears a necklace (apparently of pomegranates, but they may be lotus), earrings, two bracelets, and a crown of flowers consisting of open lotus blossoms and lotus buds. Its excellent state of preservation suggests that it was buried shortly after being sculpted, undoubtedly to avoid its destruction. Both the assumed date of this kore, about 540 BC, and the ceramics found with it, exclude a possible threat from the Persian Wars. Instead, the 540 BC date is probably tyrant Peisistratus’ return to Athens, and the expulsion of the Alcmaeonids. After studying the epigram and statue together, Jesper Svenbro recalls the obsession of the Alcmaeonid family, from one generation to the next, for names derived from the root kleos – Megacles, Cleisthenes, Pericles – and from this he supposes that the maiden Phrasikleia might belong to that family.19
However, it is also possible that Phrasikleia belonged to the circle of another powerful family of the period, that of Peisistratus. This possibility is based on the idea that Aristion of Paros, the artist who created her funerary statue, was also the one whose signature appears on the Siphnian treasury in Delphi.20 Recall that Peisistratus was restored to power in Athens with the aid of the Naxian aristocrat Lygdamis; Peisistratus then returned the favour, helping Lygdamis to exercise tyranny in Naxos and Paros, where the latter launched an ambitious building program. Aristion of Paros would have been associated with the sphere of power of these tyrants (not only Lygdamis of Naxos, but also Thrasybulus of Miletus and Peisistratus of Athens himself). Understandably, the Alcmaeonids would have attempted to erase all traces of the cultural accomplishments achieved by the tyrants. The funerary figure of Phrasikleia survived, but the inscription was obliterated.21
In any case, Phrasikleia, unmarried maiden, would belong to the aristocratic class. We may consider that her father (the paternal link noted earlier in the term kore) raised two magnificent funerary statues for her and her brother. The death of a young female noble would mean a loss to her father, given her value as a means of exchange and alliance through marriage,22 and for the whole city, as poems by Hellenistic epigrammatist Posidippus of Pella would continue to attest several centuries later.23
Along these lines, in addition to my other comments on korai and kouroi, we can also make some observations about their different postures towards the observer: in contrast to both votive and funerary kouroi, the korai seem to be involved in a relationship with the spectator: they offer or show gifts (a flower, a piece of fruit, a bird), suggesting an exchange, and reminding us that ‘the woman’s value was intimately connected to her being “given” in marriage, so the kore acquires, creates, value by the exchange with the viewer which the frontal gaze insists upon’.24 While these words refer especially to the more numerous votive korai, I consider them to be equally valid for Phrasikleia. The image of Phrasikleia is a young girl with flowers, very common in Greek iconography: gathering flowers was associated with parthenos, with prenuptial rites and marriage, and also with Persephone. If it is true that the Phrasikleia’s necklace is made of pomegranates (some authors consider them to be lotus flowers),25 this would be yet another connection with Persephone as the bride of Hades. If we bring to mind that in the Greek mentality, marriage constituted a woman’s fulfilment, then death prior to marriage was a death prior to that fulfilment, and the metaphor ‘bride of Hades’ articulates that perception.26
The girl holds a lotus flower in her left hand and this detail has been interpreted in different ways. Svenbro recalls that the lotus flower behaves like the fire of hearth and home: the blossom closes at sunset and opens again at the light of day. Phrasikleia shows a lotus blossom, a blossom that is reborn, just as the home fire and just as the kleos, her own and that of her family. Furthermore, he supports this reading in a reinterpretation of the girl’s name: if we accept the indications of Pierre Chantraine in his etymological dictionary, the name would mean ‘famous for her thoughts’,27 but phrasi- can also be derived from φράσαι, φράσασθαι, Aorist infinitives of φράζειν, φράζεσθαι, ‘calling attention to’, whereby the girl’s name would mean ‘the one who calls attention to fame, to kleos’. Svenbro interprets the fact that the lotus flower in her hand is closed as a metaphorical indication that the girl’s fame remains silent – closed – until the reader reads the epigram. Another, non-exclusive interpretation is that the closed lotus blossom alludes to the girl’s unwedded state, dead before coming into full ‘blossom’.28 However, a more plausible interpretation in my opinion is that the lotus blossom, which closes at night and opens at dawn, represents an alternation between life and death, a very clear symbol in Egyptian funerary imagery. This motif is similar to that of the ‘smelled flower’, which I shall return to later in this chapter when discussing the Brother and Sister stele.
The Phrasikleia kore is not realistic, but rather a symbolic representation of the woman’s moment of perfection, in the same way that the kouros is the image of masculine perfection attained on the battle field. Thus, the girl’s exquisite adornment and her crown evoke a bride, as if the maiden had dressed for her wedding just when death overtakes her. This image will reappear in tragedies – maidens who are about to die or to be sacrificed are dressed in wedding attire – and it has also been studied in the funerary lekythoi.29 And so the girl’s image emphasizes the same idea as the epitaph: instead of marriage, maidenhood forever. The young girl’s image thus remains perpetually attached to her father. Ancient Greece looks on the death of a girl from the perspective of a marriage thwarted, and the Phrasikleia memorial constitutes an early example of this idea. Phrasikleia will always be a kore, an unwedded maiden, linked to her father, like Hestia, but also linked to the Kore-Persephone of myth, married in Hades, an image that explains her appearance as a bride.
Another aspect of the statue of Phrasikleia that has received much attention in recent times is the polychromy still perceptible on the kore. Sophisticated techniques have been employed to determine the colour of the statue, facilitating a reconstruction of the young woman’s image that, although startling to our eyes, accustomed to white marble, is actually much closer to its original appearance, which was intended to guide the gaze and reinforce the interaction between sculpture and viewer.30
As I said in the introduction to this chapter, a new, recently published epitaph from the island of Kos makes the image of ‘bride of Hades’ explicit, something that is only hinted at in the memorial to Phrasikleia:
πα
[α] προλιπ ȏ σα . ΟΜ. . ΦΙΛ [- - - - - -]
Ἐμπεδοκράτη κεῖμ[α]ι, νύμφ’ ὀλο ȏ Ἀΐδαο·
οἰκτρὰ παθ ȏ σα, φίλ[η] οἶσι π ȏ θά
[- - - - - ]
μάτερ, ἄταν ἐλέω, κ[ἤ]ν Ἀΐδαο δό[ματι - -]31
Abandoning my father…
I, Empedokrate, lie here, bride to terrible Hades:
I have suffered a cruel destiny, beloved…
Oh, mother, I pity on my misfortune! In the house of Hades …32
We find a girl who, in the first person, presents herself as a bride to terrible Hades. Only the second verse is preserved in full: ‘I, Empedokrate, lie here, bride to terrible Hades’. The rest can only be read in part: in the first verse the girl mentions her father, who has survived her; in the third verse she refers to her cruel destiny as a young woman dead before her time; finally, in the last verse, she invokes her mother and laments her fate. The specific image of bride of Hades, a terrible abductor, is found only in this text to date. Nonetheless, it seems familiar to us from its use as a generic metaphor for the destiny of maidens who die prior to marriage, and due to the association between funerary and matrimonial rites in well-known passages of Attic tragedy, in reference to figures such as Antigone or Cassandra.33
In contrast to the image of the maiden Phrasikleia, we now turn to the funerary monument of Kroisos, fallen in battle. This funerary kouros is the only existing example where the accompanying epigram also survives;34 in terms of evidence it is just as exceptional as the Phrasikleia. We have already noted its magnificent nature, an example of aristocratic taste in funerary decoration. From the same period as the Phrasikleia, c. 540 BC, the epitaph of young Kroisos is also composed of an elegiac distich,
στθι : καὶ οἴκτιρον : Κροίσο | παρὰ σμα θανόντος :
h όν | ποτ’ ἐνὶ προμάχοις : ὄλεσε | θ ȏ ρος : Ἄρες.35
Stay and pity at the tomb of Kroisos, dead,
who one day on the front line of battle, raging Ares destroyed.
The couplet is composed of a simple first verse calling the passer-by to pause and mourn, stethi kai oiktiron (στῆθι καὶ οἴκτιρον), and a second verse suited to the death of a warrior: the expression ‘on the front line of battle’ (ἐνὶ προμάχοις), found in two other epitaphs of the era,36 and the verb ollymi (ὄλλυμι), preferred over the more generic thanein (θανεῖν) for expressing death in epigrams dedicated to combatants.37 The use of the imperative, demanding the passer-by’s attention, invites and encourages interaction between the latter and Kroisos’ image. Such a demand might not seem strange to us; however, summoning the passer-by in this way is novel in the funerary epigraphy: ‘the picture presented by the surviving evidence shows the passer-by emerging quite suddenly in sixth-century Attica’.38 In Attica in the second half of the 6th century BC, this type of inscription often suggests the passer-by should engage in one of the following actions: move past the marker, stop at the marker, look at the marker, lament. The memorial to Kroisos includes three of them.39
As regards the verses of the epigram, these have epic overtones in their mention of Ares: thouros Ares (θοῦρος Ἄρης) is a Homeric expression,40 also found in an elegy by Tyrtaeus, precisely in reference to a youth brought down by raging Ares (θοῦρος Ἄρης), fallen in the front lines (ἐν προμάχοισι πεσὼν) and whose name and fame do not fade away (οὐδέ ποτε κλέος ἐσθλὸν ἀπόλλυται οὐδ᾿ ὄνομ᾿ αὐτοῦ).41 While it is true that ‘le jeune noble, plein de valeur, ne dispose plus de l’épopée pour le glorifier’,42 at least the same epic language can be employed. Nicole Loraux, also expressly citing this epitaph, affirms that Homeric poems and aristocratic epitaphs were inclined to have the gods intervening in battle, while at the height of the Classical period, the Athenian funeral oration would dispose of this supernatural component, leaving all the glory to Athenian bravery.43 Other studies, focusing specifically on this kouros, insist on these same ideas, and essentially point to the Homeric hero, reborn under Peisistratid patronage, as the sculptor’s model for the Anavyssos kouros.44 Along these lines, a comparison with the famous Aristion stele is also quite helpful: while the latter appears with his hoplite gear,45 Kroisos reproduces the pure body, a body like that of the epic hero, the naked body of a warrior, admired and disputed over even after life was gone from it.46
Again in this case, just as with the maiden Phrasikleia and with the two siblings represented in the New York Metropolitan stele (to be discussed later), a relationship with the Alcmaeonid family has been suggested: Kroisos had died in the battle of Pallene (546 BC) and the statue was erected after 528/527 BC when the Alcmaeonids returned from exile.47 However, the idea that such a time lapse occurred between the youth’s death and the dedication of the statue rests on misleading grounds: the use of πότε (‘once’, ‘some time ago’) in the second verse. In reality, this use of pote in the epigram does not refer to a past time from the author’s point of view; it is justified in relation to the epitaph’s future reader. The author of the couplet does not write from his own time perspective, but thinks of those who will contemplate the memorial in the future. This epigram is not an exceptional case, and an ‘inscriptional πότε’ with great poetic intensity has even been spoken of in funerary dedications and epinicia, with examples such as this one in epitaphs from the time of the Pindar odes, and in Pindar’s work itself: ‘Future generations will come to learn the glorious deeds that athletes of old performed “once (upon a time)” ’.48
In this context of glorifying the youth fallen in battle, we only lack the expression olesate heben (ὀλέσατε ἥβην), ‘you lost your youth’, although the image of the kouros itself is enough to underscore the early death of Kroisos. This very common formula does appear in another epitaph slightly prior to Kroisos, which I also include in order to look more closely at the aristocratic origin of these mourned youths. The epigram reads as follows:
[εἴτε ἀστό]ς τις ἀνὲρ εἴτε χσένος | ἄλοθεν ἐλθὸν
Τέτιχον οἰκτίρα |ς ἄνδρ’ ἀγαθὸν παρίτο,
ἐν πολέμοι | φθίμενον, νεαρὰν h έβεν ὀλέσαν |τα.
ταῦτ’ ἀποδυράμενοι νσθε ἐπ |ὶ πρᾶγμ’ ἀγαθόν.49
[Whether some townsman] or a stranger coming from elsewhere,
pass way in pity of Tetichos, a noble man,
fallen in battle, his tender youth ruined.
Mourn these things, then return to noble affairs.50
The subject of the epigram is the noble Tetichos. His name, found in Athens only in this inscription, might be a diminutive formed from tettix (τέττιξ), ‘cicada’, a possibility with many overtones: Thucydides tells how elderly, upper-class Athenians tied back their hair with brooches in the shape of golden cicadas, insects native to the land, just as the Athenians themselves.51 Also the use of astos (ἀστός, pl. ἀστοί) in the first verse stresses the noble youth’s high social status. As early as Louis Gernet it was noted that the astoi, in this first half of the sixth century BC, are citizens of nobility;52 later a distinction would be established between astos (ἀστός) and polites (πολίτης), those who had civil rights and those who additionally had political rights.53 So it is that the astoi are also mentioned in the following epitaph of a young man fallen in battle:
ἀσστοῖ[ς] καὶ χσένοισι Φάνες φίλος [ἐνθάδε κεῖται], |
[h ό]ς πότ᾿ ἀρισστεύον ἐν προμάχοις [ἔπεσε].54
Loved by citizens and foreigners [here lies] Phanes,
who, one day, when showing his valour in the front lines, [fell].
As a hypothesis, I would suggest that the use of astos in these epitaphs is related to the noble origin of these fallen youths. Importantly, in the epitaphs of both Tetichos (Attica) and Phanes (Boeotia), there is more of a literary than a political value in the appeal to citizens and foreigners, in an era when the idea of citizenship was not clearly defined. Here the epigrammist is making use of the same resources as the poet Pindar when he wants to convince his audience of the value of his laudandus: astos (ἀστός) … xenos (ξένος), as conventional formula, extends the force of the imperatives to every possible passer-by.55
In the epitaphs of both Tetichos and Phanes, the term xenos appears paired with astos, and together, these create an all-inclusive appeal, irrespective of whether the passer-by is a citizen or a stranger. Later, however, in the Hellenistic period, xenos became the noun of choice to designate the passer-by in an epigram, a use that grew steadily more common after 480/79 BC. One possible explanation for this is in the success of two epigrams attributed to Simonides, one dedicated to the fallen at Salamis and another to the dead at Thermopylae. Both begin with the invocation ὤ ξεῖνε, ‘stranger’, which, given the circumstances of the burial, is all-inclusive: the deceased were buried in a foreign land, and thus these two epigrams would address everyone as xenos. The first appears on a tomb for Corinthian soldiers who died and were buried in Salamis, and the second on a memorial to the Spartans who fell at Thermopylae. The custom of using xenos as inclusive may have originated here and subsequently spread due to the fame of these poems.56
Returning to the epigram dedicated to Tetichos, the youth’s nobility is emphasized in nearly every word of the epitaph. The values of ‘Homeric society’, if we adopt the words of Mario Vegetti, are fully represented here: the term agathos above all indicates status, and it is used in the place of ‘noble’. This status must be continually reaffirmed by a certain behaviour, in the sense that agathos is the one who shows himself ‘capable of’, ‘good for’, and the agathos demonstrates these capacities in arete, especially in war.57 The social recognition given in tribute to this arete is kleos, the fame that Tetichos, noble youth fallen in battle, has attained through this memorial.
Let us also pause to consider the funerary monument which, prior to the discovery of Phrasikleia, was considered to be the most complete funerary monument of the Archaic age: a stele (c. 540–530 BC) with the figure of a male youth and a little girl. Although nothing can be deduced from the inscription concerning the relationship between the young man and the girl, this stele is commonly known as the ‘Brother and Sister’ stele. The epigram on its base is partially preserved:
μνμα φίλοι με [ 8–9 litt. ] | πατὲρ ἐπέθεκε θανόν[ι], |
σὺν 
ὲ φίλε μέτερ vacat | [-vv-vv-]58
I am the memorial set up to beloved Me[gacles?] by his father,
and the beloved mother
Regrettably, the names of the youth and the girl have been lost. Once again, as we saw when speaking of Phrasikleia and Kroisos, a relationship with the Alcmaeonid family has been suggested, this time based on the possibility that one of the names begins with the syllable Me-, perhaps Megacles.59 The only certainty is that a father had this ostentatious monument erected in memory of his children, and that once again it is quite exceptional. Upright tombstones, such as this one, began to appear around the time of the first Attic kouroi, and became popular among the aristocracy, especially for those who died young. They were usually decorated with a sphinx on top of the stele, and later on, with bas-reliefs that typically represented a single figure, corresponding to the elongated shape of the tombstone. In this case, the presence of two siblings makes it a unique finding.
The iconography of the stele is very interesting: the boy carries a little bottle of oil (an aryballos), bringing to mind his condition as an athlete, and a pomegranate or lotus flower in his hand, alluding to his prospects of new life; the girl holds a flower, perhaps a lotus, and raises it to her nose.60 As we have seen with Phrasikleia, it is sometimes difficult to clearly distinguish all the decorative elements: what Phrasikleia carries in her hand is a lotus flower, but the necklace, according to some, is made of pomegranates, while others say they are lotus flowers. In the ‘Brother and Sister’ stele, it has been customary to interpret what the boy carries in his hand as a pomegranate, but it is not clear. As for the girl, one scholar has noted that the flower she carries, in this case clearly a lotus flower, reproduces the sacred motif of the ‘smelled flower’, original to Egyptian art and also adopted by the Phoenicians: the lotus that the girl is smelling might be considered a symbol of resurrection, of immortality.61 The stele we are considering not only offers an idealized image of what these young people were like in life, but it also projects toward the afterlife with symbols such as the pomegranate and the lotus. By contrast, looking only toward the past will practically become a rule in funerary iconography of the Classical age.
Another Archaic epitaph dedicated to a pair of siblings is shown below, in iambic verse, although in this case the stele is not preserved:
τόδ᾿Ἀρχίο ᾿στι σμα : κἀ |δελφς φίλες, :
Εὐκο v |σμίδες : δὲ τοῦτ᾿ἐποί |εσεν καλόν, :
στέλε |ν : δ᾿ ἐπ᾿αὐτ ô ι : θκε Φ |αίδιμοσοφός.
This is the tomb of Archios and his beloved sister,
Eukosmides had it made beautiful,
and Phaidimos the skilled placed the stele upon it.62
Judging from the surviving documentation, for a funerary monument to commemorate two siblings, as in this case, was not at all common in the sixth century BC. However, another example may be the memorial to Phrasikleia, found next to a kouros generally considered to be a funerary monument dedicated to her brother.
There are also other examples, albeit very few, of memorials in which two siblings appear together, but only because one of them is the dedicant. I would like to conclude this section by commenting on two inscriptions of this kind, which constitute a statistical exception, the epitaph dedicated to Parthenika and the epitaph to Gnathon. Even in the fourth century BC, when we shall see a greater variety of family relations expressed in funerary epigrams than in earlier centuries, it is quite unusual for the deceased, whether a man or a woman, to be commemorated as a brother or sister. Perhaps due to the scarcity of such examples, and also to the terse nature of these two epitaphs, the feeling they express impresses us deeply.63
I shall start with the memorial to Parthenika:
Παρθενίκας τόδε μνᾶμα Φρασισθένος h ερι θανοίσας
Δαμόκλει’ ἔστασε κασιγ‹ν›έταν ποθέσαισα.64
This memorial of Parthenika, daughter of Phrasisthenes, who died young,
was raised by Damokleia, longing for her sister.
This epitaph belongs to the group of funerary monuments discovered in excavating the Kamari necropolis on the island of Thera, between 1986 and 1996. Who knows whether this memorial, considering the sister’s name Damoklea, would not have again been linked to the family of the Alcmaeonids if it had been found in Attica instead of Thera. It is dedicated to a maiden who died young, to whom her sister has raised a memorial (μνᾶμα). We know the names of both: Parthenika the former, Damokleia the latter. From its dates it is practically contemporary to Phrasikleia, but on this occasion the emphasis is placed on the longing felt by the sister, pothesaisa (ποθέσαισα). One interesting point from the maiden of Thera epitaph has to do with the appearance of the term Parthenikas / parthenikas (Παρθενίκας / παρθενίκας). I will refer later to an epitaph from Sinope where this same name appears in a dedication to a young woman: some authors take it as an allusion to her girlhood (memorial of a maiden), while others consider it a proper name (memorial of Parthenika). The same question arises in this case, but the opinion of Matthaiou seems acceptable enough, and is included as an appendix to the article cited: the author understands Parthenika to be a proper name in the Thera memorial, and the same to be true in the Sinope case, where the pyramid-shaped monument indicates on one side the parentage of the deceased, on another side her age, and on the third side her name.65 One clear argument in favour of Parthenika as a proper name is that the epitaph would otherwise be lacking precisely the key (and sometimes only) element, the name of the deceased.
As regards the epigram dedicated to Gnathon, this one is from Attica and is the only example from this period where we find a sister in the role of dedicant. It is inscribed as a spiral on a marble disc of a clearly funerary nature, which would most probably have been employed as a lid on some type of grave vase:66
Γνάθονος : τόδε σμα, : θέτο δ᾿αὐτὸν : |ἀδελφὲ : h ελίθιον : νοσελεύσα: |σα.67
This tomb of Gnathon, his sister placed here, after having cared for him in vain during his illness.
When Sarpedon, son of Zeus, is about to die in Troy, Hera speaks at first threateningly, to the dismay of his Olympian father (there are other gods who have lost sons in war, let Zeus refrain from wanting to deliver his own son from death!), but she ends in conciliatory tones: ‘No, dear as he is to you, and your heart grieves for him, leave Sarpedon there to die in the brutal onslaught, beaten down at the hands of Menoetius’ son Patroclus. But once his soul and the life force have left him, send Death to carry him home, send soothing Sleep, all the way till they reach the broad land of Lycia. There his brothers and countrymen will bury the prince with full royal rites, with mounded tomb and pillar. These are the solemn honors owed the dead’ (γέρας θανόντων).68
This tribute that will prompt remembrance, this honour due to the dead, geras thanonton, is not only the privilege of sons of the gods, as we have been observing. As an echo of Homer, once again, the same formula reappears in an epitaph from the mid-sixth century BC:
ὀπικλέος παιδὸς Δαμα |σιστράτο ἐνθάδε σμα |
Πεισιάναχς κατέθεκε· τὸ |γὰρ γέρας ἐστὶ θανόντο[ς].69
Of Damasistratos, son of Epikles,
Peisianax set up this tomb: for this is the honour due to the dead.
I have chosen this epitaph dedicated to Damasistratos, of whom we know nothing except the name of his father, in order to begin a review of some of the more well-conserved epigrams dedicated to aristocratic youth in the second half of sixth-century BC Attica (with the exception of the epigram to Chairedemos, from the mid-sixth century). Found in the church of Saint Nicholas at Anavyssos bay (recall that the Kroisos kouros was also found at Anavyssos), it has been considered one more argument in favour of the presence of a branch of the Alcmaeonids in this area, the future Cleisthenic deme of Anaphlystus.70
The epigrams that I shall now discuss were not dedicated, or at least not explicitly, to young men killed in battle; I have already mentioned these when commenting on the epitaph to Kroisos, and they have also been the subject of a recent and comprehensive study.71 It is important to note that whatever the cause of death, should this be mentioned in the epitaph, the overwhelming majority of conserved Archaic memorials and epitaphs from Attica are dedicated to young men, and occasionally young women, who died in their prime. The dedicant is usually the father, and less frequently, the mother. I shall continue my review with the following epigram, inscribed on the base of a statue or a stele, found in Attica:
Χαιρεδέμο τόδε σμα πατὲρ ἔστε[σε | θ]ανόντος
Ἀνφιχάρ‹ε›ς ἀγαθὸν παῖδα ὀ |λοφυρόμενο[ς].
Φαίδιμος ἐποίε.72
This tomb of Chairedemos, dead, was raised by his father
Anphichares, mourning a noble son.
As a prose addition to the text, we recognize the artist’s name, Phaidimos, which appears in two other inscriptions: one of these, quite fragmented, can be read on the base of a lost kore,73 the other on the lower part of the Archios and his sister stele, discussed above.74 The intervention of such a renowned artist indicates the noble origin of the person commemorated. Around the mid-seventh century BC, when the demand for stone temples and images to replace older works in wood first appeared, it is likely that the artisans who made the statues were the same ones who built the temples. Thus it was said of mythical Daedalus: ἀρχιτέκτων ἄριστος καὶ πρῶτος ἀγαλμάτων εὑρετής, ‘excellent architect and the first sculptor’.75 Signing of statues probably did not begin until there was an established artistic specialization in sculpture.76 In Attica, Phaidimos is the first such artist for whom we find signed pieces. Not lacking in self-esteem, as Boardman notes,77 we have seen him inscribe his name above as Φαίδιμοσοφός, Phaidimos the Clever. There is another curiosity regarding these artist signatures, namely, that they are not autographs in a strict sense: the sculptors themselves did not engrave their name in the stone, but it was done by a professional stoneworker, usually the same one who inscribed the funerary or votive text. For example, it has been determined that this Phaidimos, Aristion (author of the Phrasikleia kore) and Aristocles (whom we will encounter further on as the author of a non-preserved memorial), probably all worked in the same workshop, since their signatures were executed by the same hand.78
The following couplet is somewhat later, inscribed on the marble base of a stele. We read the name of a father, Cylon, who has placed the memorial in remembrance of his two dead sons. The inscription represents the only use of philemosyne (φιλεμοσύνες) in the funerary epitaphs published by Hansen:79
σμα τόδε : Κύλον : παίδοι‹ν› | ἐπέθεκε{ν} : θανό‹ν›τοι-:
μ‹ν›μα | φιλεμοσύνες : …80
This tomb was raised by Cylon for his two dead sons,
a memorial of affection…
The following is also found on the base of a stele. The inscription provides very little information and the stele has been lost, but it is very probably the epitaph for a young man since the dedicant is the mother:
Α
σι
[ίδο τό]δε [σ] |μα φίλε μέτερ κα[τέ] |
εκεν.81
This tomb of Aesimides was erected by his beloved mother
The next distich is found on the base of a marble statue of a youth, and as in all these examples, the statue is not preserved – quite regrettable in this case, since it would have been a work by Aristion of Paros:
(i) σμα πατὲρ Κλέ[[β]] |βολος82 ἀποφθιμέ |νοι Χσενοφάντοι |
θκε τόδ’ ἀντ’ ἀρετς |ἐδὲ σαοφροσύνες.
(ii) [Ἀριστίον Π]άριος | [μ᾿ἐπόεσε].83
The father Clebolos erected this tomb for his dead son Xenophantos,
for his excellence and good judgement.
[Aristion] of Paros [made me].
Another father’s lament for his son can be read in the following verses, from a piece found in 1832 in the Themistoclean Wall, and lost today:
σμα φί[λ]ο παιδὸς τόδε ἰδν Δι[όδορος] |ἔθεκεν
Στεσίο, h ὸν θάνατο[ς δακρυ] |όες καθ[έ]χει.84
This tomb of his beloved son, to be seen, was raised by [Diodoros],
of Stesias possessed by death that causes weeping.
From late in the century, the following inscription was on the base of a marble statue of a rider, not preserved:
[σ]μα τόδε, Χσενόφαντε, |πατέρ σο‹ι› θκε θανόντι |
Σόφιλος h ȏ ι πένθος |θκας ἀποφθίμενος. |
Ἀριστοκλς ἐποίεσεν.85
This tomb, Xenophantos, was raised for you, dead, by your father
Sophilos; by dying you have left him in mourning.
The next epitaph corresponds to these same dates, on the base of another lost marble stele:
οἰκτίρο86 προσορ ȏ [ν] |παιδὸς τόδε σμα |θανόντος
Σμικύθ[ο] |h ός τε φίλον ὄλεσε |ν ἔλπ’(sic) ἀγαθέν.87
I grieve, when I see this tomb of the dead boy,
of Smikythos, who destroyed the good hope of his loved ones.
Finally, we can cite the memorial of noble Kleoites:
παιδ
ς 
φθιμένοιο Κε
το τ ô Μεν |εσαίχμο
μνμ’ ἐσορ ȏ ν οἴκτιρ’ ὸς καλὸς |ὄν ἔθανε.88
Mourn as you look on this memorial
of dead Kleoites, son of Menesaichmos: though noble, he died.
In this last couplet I have preferred the translation ‘noble’, instead of ‘beautiful’,89 in line with the parallelism that Gentili establishes between the second verse of this epigram and Theognis 666:
[…] καὶ τιμῆς καὶ κακὸς ὢν ἔλαχεν
and though evil, he attains honour90
In each case these epitaphs are found on the base of stelai or lost statues, some of them including the artist’s signature (Phaidimos, Aristion, Aristocles).91 They are metrical inscriptions, striving for beauty, just as the monuments themselves. Memorials to be seen, to keep alive the names of the dead. It is no wonder that, just as poets like Pindar made a point of praising their own art along with the laudandus of the moment, sculptors showed pride in their work and made that explicit;92 for example on the base of one kore, a piece by Phaidimos, the second verse of the couplet states: καλὸν ἰδν αϜὐτὰρ Φαίδιμος ἐργάσατο, ‘Phaidimos made it beautiful, in order to be seen’.
The two examples which I have examined more closely, Phrasikleia and Kroisos, are exceptional examples of epitaphs from the Archaic age, sixth century BC, being well preserved and accompanied by their respective funerary statues.93 Both are epic in their language and heroic in their representation, although subject to metrical restrictions, to conventional formulas and to the limits of a single distich; in both cases great poetical value was attained. It is tempting to think of them as prototypical, the maiden with her allusion to death before marriage, and the youth fallen in the front lines of battle, but a study of later epitaphs from the Classical age (fifth century BC, and especially the more plentiful examples from the fourth century BC), will offer us interesting reference points in considering youths of both sexes: the images of death before marriage and a wedding in Hades are not limited to the iconography of maiden memorials, nor is the use of the verb olesthai (ὄλεσθαι), compared to the more common thanein (θανεῖν), so closely tied to the deaths of males fallen in battle that it is disallowed in remembering the death of maidens.