6 Wives and Their Masters

In the classic study by Émile Benveniste on the vocabulary of Indo-European institutions, he notes that no term can be reconstructed in that language for ‘husband’. In Greek, lacking a specific name, other terms are used: posis (πόσις), ‘master’, or the generic aner (ἀνήρ), ‘man’. Husbands will appear as both of these terms in the metrical funerary epitaphs, and we will also see how husbands are remembered as such, not in their own memorials, but in their wives’. Surely it is no coincidence that this lack of precise terminology coexists with considerable indifference toward the condition of ‘husband’ as something worth mentioning about the deceased. Thus, in epitaphs of the fourth century BC, the woman is usually honoured as a wife, while allusions to the family sphere are much less common for men; only on three occasions do we find an explicit mention of the status of husband.¹

Prior to this, in the fifth century BC, women generally are the subject of very few epitaphs, and only one of these – from the island of Chios – is a husband’s dedication to his parakoitis (παράκοιτις), ‘bed mate’:

ἐσλῆ[ς] τ ô το (sic) γυ|ναικὸς ὁδὸν π|άρα τήνδε τὸ σ|ῆμα

λεωφόρον| Ἀσπασίης ἐσ|[τ]ὶ καταπθιμ|[έν]ης·

ὀργῆς δ’ ἀ|[ντ’] ἀγαθῆς Εὐω|[πί]δης τόδε μν|[ῆ]μα

αὐτῆ ἐπέσ|τησεν, τ ô παρά|κοιτις ἔην.2

This tomb to a noble woman, beside the road

well-travelled, is of dead Aspasia.

Because of her good nature, Euopides raised this memorial

for her who was his wife.

In these distichs we observe the insistence on the stele placed ‘beside the road’, an aspect we have already discussed, having to do with the elite’s desire to give visibility to their dead. Also interesting is the unusual case where the terms sema (σῆμα) and mnema (μνῆμα) appear in the same epigram; though the difference between them is often minimized, here it is clearly identifiable: the former refers to the physical monument itself and its location; the latter speaks of the remembrance, of fame associated with the deceased’s noble condition.

In the pages that follow I comment on some of the funerary epigrams of husbands and wives; to begin, we devote some special attention to the epitaph of Melite.

Another one came from the bee … fortunate is he who has one of these!

As noted in the introductory chapters, the Attic funerary stelai of the Classical age constitute a well-known and thoroughly examined corpus, presenting typified images that indicate age and family relations through certain attributes and gestures that are repeated from one stele to another. Still, despite the repetitions, the apparent simplicity of the images and how readily one can empathize with them, leading expert K. Friis Johansen encourages us to look more closely at the stelai and notice the many unanswered questions.³ To begin with, one aspect seems quite strange from our perspective: in stelai that represent couples or groups, we cannot always tell who the deceased person is. If the stele has an epigram, it will enlighten us, but if not, as in so many cases, we are left to wonder. If we see the image of a youth and an old man, both of them having a grieved expression, is the youth the one who has died, hence his melancholy expression and bowed head? Or is he saddened at the death of his father, who also looks dejected in the image? And in the scenes of woman and maiden, often recreated in the style of the votive reliefs of Demeter and Persephone, is it the maiden who has died, as the mythical allusion would suggest? Or does the young woman mourn the death of her mother?

The stele we are about to address seems at first to lack any originality. In other words, it is extremely conventional: a husband and wife, the woman seated on the left of the image and the husband standing at her side. The epitaph remains, informing us that the wife has died, and speaking of the love that husband and wife professed. In the only study dedicated to possible correlations between epigram and image, Clairmont reviews nearly one hundred funerary monuments of the Archaic and Classical periods, and, referring to this stele, notes that hardly any connection exists between this particular image, quite conventional, and the text.4 He reaches the same conclusion in the majority of cases, not surprisingly if we consider that sculptors offered the public rather standardized images. Except for a few cases, they reproduced neither the particular features of the deceased nor the circumstances of his or her death. Nonetheless, while acknowledging the conventional nature of the image, I believe that in this specific case epitaph and image reinforce each other, carrying the idealization of marriage to an extreme.

Melite’s stele was found in Piraeus and is dated c. 365–340 BC. The epitaph is composed of two hexameters (with one particularity that I mention below) and two catalectic trochaic tetrameters:

χαῖρε τάφος Μελίτης· χρηστ|ὴ γυνὴ ἐνθάδε κεῖται·

φιλοῦντα| ἀντιφιλοῦσα τὸν ἄνδρα Ὀνήσιμ|ον ἦσθα κρατίστη·

τοιγαροῦν ποθεῖ | θανοῦσάν σε, ἦσθα γὰρ χρηστὴ γυνή. |

καὶ σὺ χαῖρε φίλτατ᾿ἀνδρῶν, ἀλλὰ | τοὺς ἐμοὺς φίλει.5

Hail, grave of Melite: Here lies a diligent wife.

Loving to your husband Onesimus and beloved of him you were the best,

for this reason he still longs for you, for you were a diligent wife.

Hail to you as well, the best of men, and take care of my dear ones.

This epigram has been studied fundamentally along two lines: in substance, because of its value as evidence of reciprocity in marital love;⁶ in form, because of the peculiar play of dialogue, taking in turn the voice of the passer-by (or more likely, of the husband) and, in the last verse, of the deceased wife herself.7 My own commentary takes a more literary than formal approach.

The first verse opens and closes in conventional fashion, with the formulas χαῖρε τάφος Μελίτης (passer-by greets the memorial) and ἐνθάδε κεῖται (‘here lies’), but in between, the adjective chreste (χρηστή) applied to Melite, though not unusual in the epitaphs of both men and women, takes on special importance in this context, as we shall soon see. The second verse presents several peculiarities. First, philounta (φιλοῦντα), at the beginning of the verse, is metrically superfluous,⁸ although for the sake of meaning it is required by antiphilousa (ἀντιφιλοῦσα): ‘loving and beloved’.⁹ Taking the expression as a whole, philounta antiphilousa, the editors point out the following loci similes: Plato, Lysis 212c–d and Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1155b28, 1157b30, 1159a30, Eudemian Ethics 1236b2.10 Beginning with the latter, by Aristotle, we find that nearly all the references are found in Book 8 of Nicomachean Ethics, which deals with friendship: ἐπὶ μὲν τῇ τῶν ἀψύχων φιλήσει οὐ λέγεται φιλία· οὐ γάρ ἔστιν ἀντιφίλησις, ‘fondness for inanimate things is not called friendship, because there is no reciprocity’; ἀντιφιλοῦσι δὲ μετὰ προαιρέσεως, ‘reciprocal friendship implies choice’; ἀντιφιλεῖσθαι δ᾿ οὐ ζητοῦσιν, ‘they are not seeking to be loved in return’ (speaking of the love of mothers for their children). In the passage from Eudemian Ethics, he defines ἀντιφιλία, or reciprocal friendship, as being characteristic of noble men. If we turn to Plato, we find a similar context: Lysis discusses the topic of friendship, what it means to be a friend, and in this framework we again find the concept of ἀντιφιλία, love that receives love in return.

While it is true that the passages cited here speak of antiphilesis (ἀντιφίλησις), of reciprocity in friendship or love, two objections might be made to considering them possible influences in the present epitaph. The first objection, that none of these refer to marital love (more than obvious in Plato); the second, it seems quite unlikely that these texts would have been so familiar as to be reflected in a fourth-century BC epitaph. In any case, their influence seems to me much less likely than that of another passage which has been almost entirely overlooked in the criticism, and which meets the criteria that these two philosophical passages do not – referring to love in marriage and having gained unquestionable popularity: Semonides’ famous iamb against women, precisely in the verses where he speaks of the bee woman, Fr. 7.86.11 In this poem, although it is known to us as the iamb against women, in fact he is speaking of wives,¹² and the bee-wife is the only one who can bring good fortune to him who finds her:

τὴν δ᾿ἐκ μελίσσης· τήν τις εὐτυχεῖ λαβών

Another one came from the bee … fortunate is he who has one!

and the iambist characterizes her in the following manner:

φίλη δὲ σὺν φιλέοντι γηράσκει πόσει

τεκοῦσα καλὸν κὠνομάκλυτον γένος.

a loving wife, she grows old with her loving husband

producing handsome and illustrious offspring.

These two notes summarize the virtue of the bee-wife and how she is different from the rest of the women who make up Semonides’ bestiary: she loves and is loved by her husband and has borne a handsome lineage of children. The epitaph under study here picks up the two characteristics: φιλοῦντα ἀντιφιλοῦσα τὸν ἄνδρα, in v. 2, ‘loving to your husband Onesimus and beloved of him’, and in the last verse, in the mouth of Melite herself, a plea to her husband, ἀλλὰ τοὺς ἐμοὺς φίλει, ‘take care of my dear ones’, quite probably referring to their children.

If we also take into account the similarity between the name of the deceased, Melite (Μελίτη), and the word for bee, melissa (μέλισσα), it is hard to escape an evocation of Semonides.¹³

We may now return to that first verse, which actually says it all: χαῖρε τάφος Μελίτης· χρηστὴ γυνὴ ἐνθάδε κεῖται. As hinted above, the adjective chreste takes on special importance here and is key to understanding the poem, since it is the qualifier given to the best of the bees, the chreste melissa (χρηστὴ μέλισσα), that industrious worker that we know well from Aristotle’s History of Animals, especially 624a–b. Melite is the perfect bee-wife, who does not use up her home, but increases it through her work.14 A loving wife, loved by her husband and the mother of children, she appears on the stele next to her husband, in her well-cared-for home – not, as the poet from Amorgos describes, next to other women telling each other ἀφροδισίους λόγους, ‘love stories’.15

We now leave the epigram, which after a closer reading is much less conventional that it first seemed, and turn to the image. Our intent is not to question the idea that Attic funerary stelai give little room for singularities, and that age, gender and social condition are represented in codified fashion. Numerous scholars generally agree on another equally important consideration, namely, that Attic funerary stelai art commemorates in the retrospective sense, that is, it does not anticipate the future with allusions to a promise of life after death, but articulates present social ideals and represents a certain ideology.¹⁶ Although this idea is not fully applicable to the Archaic age, where we have already seen that images tend to also have prospective functions, including symbols such as the pomegranate and certain flowers related to the chthonic powers, we do find it to be particularly applicable to funerary monuments of the Classical period.

Taking these assumptions as our starting point, it is easy to see that the stele that represents Melite and her husband Onesimus makes use of all the gestures that codify the more desirable aspects of matrimony, and perfectly complements the epigram inscribed there.

The wife is seated on the left. We identify her as the deceased only because of the epigram that accompanies the image, as noted above; scholars no longer consider the seated position to be assigned exclusively to the person to whom the stele is dedicated, at least for the Classical period. What we do find is a clear preference of sculptors to present the woman in this position, regardless of her role in the scene. The emblematic image of femininity, this posture becomes the most evident iconographic translation for marriage.¹⁷

Melite wears a chiton (χιτών) and himation (ἱμάτιον), the latter garment raised slightly in her left hand in a gesture that evokes the ritual of the anakalypteria (ἀνακαλυπτήρια), the unveiling of the bride, and underscores the importance of the veil in the transformation of maiden to wife. This motif also appears frequently outside the nuptial context,18 suggesting acceptance,¹⁹ being found not only in representations of brides, but also as a gesture of the married woman toward her husband, in short, as an indication of social status.²⁰

Finally, Melite and her husband take each other’s right hand in a new codified gesture, dexiosis. This joining of the hands also has a long interpretive history and has been thought of especially as a kind of salute, either a farewell that takes place in this world, or a reencounter that is projected into the hereafter, but this hypothesis seems finally to have been discarded in favour of the idea that it emphasizes close unity between the individuals represented. In fact, dexiosis is particularly associated with scenes that represent family groups.

The image on this stele, though conventional, makes use of all the gestures that stand for the perfect matrimonial union in iconographic language: the wife is represented seated, taking her himation in hand; the husband appears by her side, and grasps her other hand. On some occasions, one of these gestures alone is the key to understanding a stele where there is no epigram; here all three gestures reinforce the message of the verses, which in addition to the echoes of Semonides, adopt the form of a dialogue between husband and wife, emphasizing the unity between them even more.

Tribute to wives, in spite of Pericles

After examining the exceptional example of Melite’s stele and epigram, let us now review some other evidence from the same period, in all cases but the last, from Attica. To begin, let us note that on the fourth-century BC stelai dedicated to married women, aside from their customary reference to husband and children, we also find praise that these wives have gained for themselves among men – in clear transgression of Pericles’ oft-touted recommendation.

The words that Thucydides placed in the statesman’s mouth in his famous funerary speech of the first year of the Peloponnesian War (431–430 BC) seem long forgotten. At the end of this speech, Pericles reminds the widows: εἰ δέ με δεῖ καὶ γυναικείας τι ἀρετῆς, ὅσαι νῦν ἐν χρηείᾳ ἔσονται, μνησθῆναι, βραχείᾳ παραινέσει ἅπαν σημανῶ. τῆς τε γὰρ ὑπαρχούσης φύσεως μὴ χείροσι γενέσθαι ὑμῖν μεγάλη ἡ δόξα καὶ ἧς ἂν ἐπ’ ἐλάχιστον ἀρετῆς πέρι ἢ ψόγου ἐν τοῖς ἄρσεσι κλέος ᾖ (‘If I may speak also of the duty of those wives who will now be widows, a brief exhortation will say it all. Your great virtue is to show no more weakness than is inherent in your nature, and to cause least talk among males for either praise or blame’).21 However, the epitaphs of the fourth century BC do assert this fame, as we shall see, and as much as the genre allows, they elaborate on the praise of these women’s virtue.

Our first example, composed of a single elegiac distich, is noted for its explicit reference to immortal fame, kleos athanaton (κλέος ἀθάνατον). Aristokrateia is lauded with an epic expression, though it is applied to an unepic virtue, sophrosyne. The family members mentioned are husband and mother; in the absence of any mention of children, we may imagine a young woman who died shortly after marriage:

[ἥ]δ’ ἔθανεν προλιπ ô σα πόσιν καὶ μητ[έρα κεδνὴν] |

[κ]αὶ κλέος ἀθάνατον σωφροσύνης [μεγάλης]. |

Ἀριστοκράτεια Κορινθία. vvv(v) Θεόφ[ιλος].22

This woman died leaving behind a husband and beloved mother

and immortal fame for her great good judgement.

Aristokrateia of Corinth. —

The following epigram speaks of praise that the deceased has attained, largely among men. A kind of praise and tribute, yes, that is characteristic of women (ἔπαινος … γυναικῶν); but if Pericles wanted the virtue of women (γυναικείας ἀρετῆς) to be spoken of as little as possible among men (ἐν τοῖς ἄρσεσι), even shortening his own admonition (βραχείᾳ παραινέσει ἅπαν σημανῶ), Chairippe’s memorial explicitly refers to the high tribute that she attained among men. The protagonist of this epitaph even speaks herself in the final verse, proudly affirming that she has left her children the remembrance of her nobility:

(i) Χαιρίππη.

(ii) ὅστις ἔπαινος ἄριστος ἐν ἀνθρώποισιν γυναικῶν, |

Χαιρίππη τούτο πλεῖστον ἔχουσ’ ἔθανεν·|

μνημεῖον δὲ ἀρετῆς παισὶν ἐμοῖς ἔλιπ‹ο›ν.23

(i) Chairippe.

(ii) The best praise for women among men,²⁴

Chairippe died having attained it in the utmost:

I have left my children the remembrance of my excellence.

The following epitaph speaks of a woman named Mnesarete, who owes her fame to the well-preserved, quite splendid stele. Mnesarete appears seated, accompanied by another woman standing, thought by some to be a servant, by others to be her sister. The epigram ends with a literary image of the Persephone’s chamber which receives those who reach Hades:

(i) Μνησαρέτη Σωκράτος.

(ii) ἥδη πόσιν τ’ ἔλιπεν καὶ ἀδελφὸς μητρί τε πένθος

καὶ τέκνον μεγάλης τε ἀρετῆς εὔκλεαν ἀγήρω.

(iii) ἐνθάδε τὴμ πάσης ἀρετῆς ἐπί τέρ[μα μολ ô ]σαν

Μνησαρέτηγ κατέχε Φερσεφόνης θ‹ά›λαμος.25

(i) Mnesarete of Socrates.

(ii) This woman left behind husband and siblings and sorrow to her mother,

a son and imperishable fame of her great excellence.

(iii) Here, having reached the end of all excellence,

Mnesarete is welcomed to the Persephone’s chamber.

This epitaph is formed by two hexameters and an elegiac distich. Despite its relative length, it says little about Mnesarete; in fact it asserts the same thing in two ways, and therefore has been considered one of the oldest examples of ‘art of variation’: the arete of Mnesarete is the object of the epigram and acts as a nexus that joins two pairs of verses not connected by any other narrative element.26 However, a closer look reveals at least two elements worth mentioning; on one hand, another case of attaining great fame (not qualified this time as ‘immortal’, but ‘which does not grow old’: μεγάλης τε ἀρετῆς εὔκλεαν ἀγήρω);²⁷ on the other hand, the reference to the Persephone’s chamber, a divinity who becomes increasingly present in this period and practically replaces Hades in epitaphs of the fourth century BC.

Now turning to the memorial of Myrtis, the surviving stele represents the deceased woman standing; next to her, their hands united in the gesture of dexiosis, her mother Hierokleia. The relationship between mother and daughter is the iconographic subject of the stele, and is furthermore reflected in the first verse, which highlights Myrtis’s maternal filiation (Ἱεροκλείας θυγάτηρ). The distich that forms the epitaph mentions the two women and Myrtis’s husband:

(i) Μυρτὶς Ἱεροκλείας θυγάτηρ Μόσχου | γυνὴ ἐνθάδε κεῖται,

πλεῖστα τρόποις | ἀρέσασα ἀνδρί τε τοῖς τε ἔτεκε

(ii) Ἱερόκλεια. Μυρτίς.28

(i) Myrtis, daughter of Hierokleia, wife of Moschos, lies here,

she who by her character pleased exceedingly her husband and children.

(ii) Hierokleia. Myrtis.

We continue with an epigram dedicated to a young newlywed:²⁹

[οἶκον ?ἔδωχ᾿῾Υ]έναιος, ἐν ὧι ποτε Παμφίλη ἥδε

ζῆλον ἔχοσ᾿ὤικει τὸμ μακαριστότατον·|

[πρὶν ?δ᾿?ἔτ᾿ἔ]τ τελέσαι [ίο] εἴκοσ[ιν] ὀρφανίσασα

νυμφιδίος οἴκος ἡλικίας ἔθανεν.³⁰

Hymenaios gave her a home, where Pamphile, who now lies here,

lived then in an enviable state of great happiness.

But she died before the age of twenty, leaving orphaned

the nuptial home of her youth.

In contrast to the epitaphs of married women, where the husband, posis (πόσις), is usually mentioned, here we find reference to the home of the bridegroom, nymphidios oikos (νυμφιδίος οἰκος), the girl’s new home. Maidens who die before marriage abandon the home of their father; in this case, the young woman has left the bridegroom’s home an orphan. This is the same idea, the condition of being newly wed, that is being highlighted with the appearance of Hymenaios in the very first verse. This epitaph makes no attempt to praise the young wife, but its theme is the newlywed’s early death.

The following epitaph, composed of a single distich, offers minimal information about the deceased woman:

ἐνθάδε τὴν ἀγαθὴν καὶ σώφρονα γαῖ᾿ ἐκάλυψεν|

Ἀρχεστράτην ἀνδρὶ ποθεινοτάτην.31

Here the earth covers noble and judicious

Archestrate, much longed for by her husband.

The stele survives, and if we accept it as a source of more information about Archestrate, we would say that she left behind a young child, who appears between her and another woman who offers her a small box. It is true that the child is not named in the epitaph, while the husband who is named does not appear on the stele. However, we need not consider this to be of great significance. What is clear is that Archestrate is remembered and her absence is keenly felt, precisely because of her central role in the idealistic homely scene that the stele recreates.³²

In the case of the Peisikrateia memorial, the stele also survives and shows her seated, on the left. She is accompanied by two men, both standing, both of them bearded:

(i) Πεισικράτεια Εὐφρονίου | [Λ]αμπτρείως. Εὐφρόνιος.

(ii) Πεισικράτεια ἥδ᾿ἐστὶ Εὐφρονίο θυγά|τηρ,

ἧς ψυχὴν μὲν ἔχει τὸ χρέων γ᾿, ἣ | [τ]οῖς δὲ τέκνοισι

τὴν ἀρετὴν ἀσκεῖν | σωφροσύνην τε ἔλιπεν.

(iii) Ἀριστόδικος.³³

(i) Peisikrateia, daughter of Euphronios of Lamptrai.³⁴ Euphronios.

(ii) This is Peisikrateia, daughter of Euphronios.

Fate possesses her soul; to her children

she has left excellence and good judgment so that they might practice it.

(iii) Aristodikos.

As for interpretation of the stele, the older man who appears on the left, leaning on a staff and taking Peisikrateia’s hand, would convincingly represent her father. The man who appears in the centre perhaps should be identified as Aristodikos (husband? brother?).

I now examine a longer epitaph, dedicated to Archestrate, where we find one of the few references to eusebeia (εὐσέβεια), ‘piety’, in the corpus used for this study:

(i) πλεῖστομ μὲν καὶ ζῶσα [τ]ρό | πων σῶν ἔσχες ἔπαινον, |

Λυσάνδρου Πιθέως| Ἀρχεστράτη ἔγγονε, καὶ νῦ[ν] |

[λ]είπεις σοῖσι φίλοισι μέγαν πόθον, | ἔξοχα δ᾿αὑτῆς

ἀνδρί, λιποῦσα φάος| μοιριδίωι θανάτωι.

(ii) εὐσεβῆ ἀσκήσασα βίον| καὶ σώφρονα θνήισκω

ἡνίκα | μοι βιότου μόρσιμον ἦλθε τέλος.

(iii) πένθος μητρὶ λιποῦσα κασιγνή|τωι τε πόσει τε

παιδί τ᾿ἐμῶι | θνήισκω καί με χθὼν ἥδε καλύ|πτει

ἡ πᾶσιν κοινὴ τοῖς ἀπογιγνο|μένοις·

εἰμὶ δὲ Λυσάνδρου | Πιθέως Ἀρχεστράτη ἥδε.35

(i) When living, you obtained highest praise for your character,

Archestrate, daughter of Lysander of Pithos;³⁶ now,

you leave your loved ones with a painful yearning, especially

your husband, after forsaking the light for fatal death.

(ii) I die having led a pious and judicious life

when overtaken by the time fixed for my life to end.

(iii) Leaving grief to my mother, brother, husband

and child, I die and am covered by this earth,

common to all who perish.

I am Archestrate, daughter of Lysander of Pithos.

As I indicated, the mention of eusebeia (εὐσέβεια) is far from common in funerary epigraphy. Prior to this example, it is possibly found in an epitaph from the late fifth century BC,³⁷ also of a woman, but we must take this with some reservation, given that the text is reconstructed, and precisely in the part that affects the term eusebeia. Both the reconstructed text proposed by Peek and the commentary on the image, found in Clairmont and based on that reconstruction, are untenable. In fact, the Hansen publication that I always take as my basis accepts none of the proposed reconstructions (de supplementis tacere malim, says the editor).38

Returning to the epitaph of Archestrate, here the reference to a pious life is established without any doubt: εὐσεβῆ … βίον. While it is true that since the time of Homer’s poems we find the Greeks behaving piously in relation to their gods, we should keep in mind that this attitude is not designated by the term eusebeia, either in Homer, in Hesiod, or in the first lyric poems.39 Theognis was the first poet to use the term.40 With Pindar, and the turning of the fifth century BC, eusebeia (both as respect for the gods and for one’s parents) and its derivatives have already become part of the Greek language.41 This is evidenced in another epitaph dedicated to a woman, where a reference to the daughter’s piety is found:

Κερκώπη μὲν ἔγωγ’ ἐκαλούμην, | εἰμὶ δὲ πατρὸς

Σ[ω]κράτου Ἡδύτιον | Μαραθωνίου, εὐθ[α]νάτως δὲ

στείχω | ζηλωτὴ Φερσεφόνης θάλαμον, |

γήραι ἀριθμ[ή]σασ’ ἐννέα ἐτῶν | δεκά‹δ›ας.

εὐσεβίαι θυγατρὸς δὲ | ἐτάφην ὥσπερ με προσήκει.⁴²

I was called Cicada, but I am Hedytion, daughter

of Socrates of Marathon, and having died well,

envied I make my way to the Persephone’s chamber,

after counting in my old age nine decades.

Because of the piety of my daughter, I was given the burial that was due me.

In this case, it is a woman whose behaviour towards her mother fulfills the demands of eusebeia and a record of this is left on her memorial.

Another aspect that has attracted attention in this marble lekythos inscription is the nickname of the deceased, Cercope (Κερκώπη), one of the names for cicada. Some authors do not take it in its mythical sense, associated with the longevity of cicadas and hence Hedytion’s ninety years; instead they feel it emphasizes that very female characteristic of talkativeness.43 Nonetheless, I do not feel that Hedytion’s long life, the explicit motif of the epitaph, can be totally discarded as an explication for this nickname. In any case, it is the mention of eusebeia that interests me, this time of a daughter toward her mother, whose funeral she has aptly orchestrated, and also the reappearance of the image ‘Persephone’s chamber’, to which I will return later.

We continue with another epitaph, this time in hexameters, dedicated to a young married woman; the stele is also preserved. An express indication of age is quite infrequent, and just as we saw when Pamphile’s age was mentioned above, the primary motif of this epitaph is lamentation for the death of a young wife:

(i) Φίλαγρος Ἀγγελῆθεν. Ἥγιλλα Φιλάγρο.

(ii) ἡλικίαμ μὲν ἐμὴν ταύτην δεῖ πάντας ἀκοῦσαι·

εἰκοστῶι καὶ πέμπτωι ἔτει λίπον ἡλίου αὐγάς. |

τοὺς δὲ τρόπους καὶ σωφροσύνην ἣν εἴχομεν ἡμεῖς

ἡμέτερος πόσις οἶδεν ἄριστ’ εἰπεῖν περὶ τούτων.44

Philagros of Angele. Hegilla daughter of Philagros.

Let everyone hear how old I was:

at age twenty-five I abandoned the light of the sun.

As for my nature and the good judgment that I had,

my husband is better able to report on that.

In the final Attic epigram that I am going to consider, the one dedicated to Nikoptoleme, we re-encounter several of the motifs already seen: the allusion to Persephone; the explicit mention, not of immortal fame, but of immortal remembrance, mnemen athanaton (μνήμην ἀθάνατον) and the allusion to the piety of the deceased. Several names appear extra metrum, I reproduce only the epigram:

σῆς ἀρετῆς, Νικοπτολέμη, χρόνος οὔποτε λ[ύ]σει|

μνήμην ἀθάνατον, σῶι πόσει ἣν ἔλιπες·

εἰ δέ τις εὐσεβίας παρὰ Φερσεφόνει χάρις ἐστίν, |

καὶ σοὶ τῆσδε μέρος δῶκε Τύχη φθιμένει.45

Of your excellence, Nikoptoleme, time shall not destroy

its immortal remembrance, which you have left to your husband.

And if any recognition of piety exists next to Persephone,

to you too, dead, Fortune has granted some share.

I have already mentioned the fact that the presence of Persephone becomes prevalent in the epitaphs of this period; we have also noted that expressions linked to this ‘Persephone’s chamber’ would serve the Orphic and Dionysiac followers as a channel for their beliefs on the immortality of the soul.46 In this specific case, however, the most that is suggested is reciprocity in human and divine relations: if piety has any recompense, Fortune will give Nikoptoleme her share.⁴⁷ The information offered by the epitaph does not allow us to further specify the beliefs of the deceased; we can only note the simultaneous appearance of the term eusebeia, the mention of Persephone and hopes of a future reward. Perhaps this vagueness is also significant and can be read as pointing to non-mainstream beliefs.

Also interesting is an epitaph from Rhodes, inscribed on a well-preserved stele that represents the deceased next to another woman who might be a family member or a slave. The first verse is very similar to one discussed earlier, from the memorial to Chairippe, and it insists again on the praise that a woman can attain among men:

ὅστις ἄριστος ἔπαινος ἐν ἀνθρώποισι γυναικός,

Καλλιαρίστα Φιληράτο τοῦτον ἔχουσα ἔθανεν,

σωφροσύνας ἀρετᾶ[ς] | τε· ἀλόχωι πόσις ὅν‹ε›κα τόνδε

Δαμοκλῆς {ε}στᾶσεν, μνημόσυνον φιλίας·

ἀνθ’ ὧν οἱ δαίμων ἐσθλὸς ἕποιτο βίωι.48

The best tribute that a woman may receive among men,

Kalliarista, daughter of Phileratos, has attained it before dying,

because of her good judgement and excellence. For this her husband Damokles

for his wife raised this monument of his love:

in exchange, may a favourable destiny⁴⁹ accompany him in his life.

In this epitaph, the mention of reciprocity and reward is more complex than in previous cases: Kalliarista is remembered with a memorial for her good judgement and excellence, and the husband, for his part, asserts his prayer from this same memorial that destiny will smile on him in reward for having raised the monument to his wife.

Quite universally, from the briefest to the most extended of these epitaphs, they all focus on the sphere of family relations, and leave us in nearly total ignorance about any specific detail of these women’s lives – in contrast to what we shall soon see with the men. Even so, I note certain aspects of interest, such as Pericles’ recommendation about the glory of women, now forgotten in the fourth century BC, and above all the celebration of eusebeia, understood both as respect for the gods and for one’s parents, seeming to be quite especially associated with the behavior of women. This idea is confirmed with two more examples, an epitaph from Attica, dedicated to a man and wife, and a brief distich found in Kamarina, whose subject is a young woman. The first, dedicated to a foreign isoteles50 and his wife, both of them well advanced in years, is a double epitaph whose final verses read thus:

[…] καὶ ἐγὼ τοῦδ’ ἀνδρὸς ἔφυν καὶ πάντα ὁμοί‹α›|

γήραι καὶ φροντίδι εὐσεβίας ἕνεκα.⁵¹

[…] and I was equal in every way to the old age and good sense

of this man, thanks to piety.

Although it may be supposed that piety was practised by both of them, equal in all things as the epigram says, it is the wife precisely who says that eusebeias heneka (εὐσεβίας ἕνεκα), ‘thanks to piety’, she was able to be equal to her husband in age and in good judgement.⁵² We must also consider that although there is a single funerary monument for the couple, there is a clear separation between their respective epitaphs, allowing us to consider them somewhat independent: the four hexameters dedicated to the husband and the distich of the wife, translated above, are separated by a painting.

The distich found in Kamarina, as we said, is dedicated to a young woman:

σωφρ[ο]σύνην τιμῶσα | δικαιοσύνην τε σέβου[σ]α|

[Ἱ]ππὼ ἐν ἡλικίαι πνεῦμ’ ἔ[λ]ιπεν βιότου.53

Although she highly valued good judgement, and honoured justice,

Hippo gave up her life’s breath in her youth.

This epigram is particularly interesting because of the explicit association between eusebeia and dikaiosyne. In the epigraph corpus edited by Hansen, the first appearance of dikaiosyne as part of epigraphic praise is found in the memorial of a copper-smelter (χαλκόπτης), a man from Gortyna, to whom his children dedicated a stele: μνῆμα δικαισύνης καὶ σωφροσύνης ἀρετῆς τε, ‘a memorial of justice, good judgement and excellence’ (fifth century BC).54 In the fourth century BC some examples are found, but few. In some cases the term appears alone,⁵⁵ in others it is combined with arete⁵⁶ or with arete and sophrosyne.57 The epitaph of young Hippo is the first where we find an association between the verb sebo (σέβω) and dikaiosyne.

In closing our discussion of tribute to women, it is true that in some instances one perceives a certain reluctance, or conditionality, in offering such praise, but this is by no means universal, as we have seen. Nicole Loraux, in an attempt to find similarities and differences between tragic discourse on the glory of women, and the more traditional discourse represented by the epitaphs, accurately noted certain reservations about the praise of women in three epitaphs.⁵⁸ One is dedicated to Chairippe, and I discussed it at the beginning of this section; the other two have not yet been discussed here. Let us have a look, then, at these two cases; the first is from Amorgos:

[εἴ]περ ἐν ἀνθρώποισι γυναικῶν ἔστ’ ἀρετή τις, |

[ἥδ]ε ἔλαχεν γνώμης δικαίης μέρος οὐκ ἐλά|[χι]στον·

δόξα δ’ἔπαινον ἔχει, σωφροσύνη | [δὲ] ἀρετήν.59

If any female excellence exists among men,

this woman attained no small share because of her just understanding:

good sense results in tribute, and good judgement in excellence.

The epitaph opens with a conditional,⁶⁰ but this formula does not express a hesitation, it is used to underline the truth: virtue in women does exist. In the following epitaph, at least a formal reluctance to the praise of women appears, once again in the opening line:

(i) Γλυκέρα Θουκλείδου

(ii) σπάνις ἐστὶ γυνα‹ι›κί, ἐσθλὴν καὶ σώφρονα φῦναι|

τὴν αὐτὴν, δοκίμως τοῦδ’ ἔτυχεγ Γλυκέρα.⁶¹

Glykera, daughter of Thoukleides.

What is rare for a woman, to be by nature noble and judicious

at the same time, this was attained by Glykera in notable degree.

The epitaph highlights the rarity of nobility and good judgement coexisting in a woman, but this may be poetic recourse; we have seen the same expression, spanis (σπάνις), ‘rarely’, used above to speak of faithfulness in men.⁶² What is more important in this case is the tribute likening Glykera to the admired Alcestis of Euripides. This is how Pheres, the father of Admetus, addressed his son, after learning of the death of his young wife: ἥκω κακοῖσι σοῖσι συγκάμνων, τέκνον· / ἐσθλῆς γὰρ, οὐδεὶς ἀντερεῖ, καὶ σώφρονος / γυναικὸς ἡμάρτηκας (‘I come to your aid in your misfortune, son: for no one will deny that you have lost a noble and judicious woman’).63 From this we may understand that Thucydides’ words delivered by Pericles still have some weight, but at the same time, people are finding ways to get around his recommendation. We might even suggest that the conditional expressions that begin certain epitaphs (εἴπερ ἐν ἀνθρώποισι γυναικῶν ἔστ’ ἀρετή τις …, ‘if among men there can be any nobility characteristic to women …’) represent a point of contention, a kind of dialectical response, to the words of Pericles: εἰ δέ με δεῖ καὶ γυναικείας τι ἀρετῆς […] μνησθῆναι …, ‘if I must also make mention of the nobility of women … ’.64

As for eusebeia, for the moment I only note its special connection to the sphere of women. In the final chapter, I propose an interpretation that looks further into the meaning of this ‘piety’ that implies a reciprocity between human behaviour and divine reward.

Tribute to their masters

As I have noted earlier, husbands are not usually commemorated as such in the funerary epigrams. One of the few examples is found in an interesting epitaph dedicated to Potamon of Thebes, a performer on the musical wind instrument aulos:

(i) Ἑλλὰς μὲν πρωτεῖα τέχνης αὐλῶν ἀπένειμεν|

Θηβαίωι Πο‹τ›άμωνι, τάφος δ᾿ὅδε δέξατο σῶμα·|

πατρὸς δὲ μνήμαισιν Ὀλυνπίχου αὔξετ᾿ἔπαινος, |

οἷον ἐτέκνωσεμ παῖδα σοφοῖς βάσανον.

(ii) Πατρόκλεια Ποτάμωνος γυνή.65

(i) Hellas granted supremacy in the art of the aulos

to Potamon of Thebes; this grave holds his body.

His tribute increases with the remembrance of his father Olympichos,⁶⁶

who fathered such a son, a touchstone for the learned.

(ii) Patrokleia, wife of Potamon.

The interest of this epitaph goes much further than the final mention of his wife; in fact, the memorial to Potamon has served to shed some light on another important figure in the history of Greek music: the auletes Pronomos.67 Pronomos has not attracted much attention as an artist, since all the focus has gone to the famous Pronomos Vase, an essential pictorial reference for studying Greek theatre. This red figure vase shows several actors at a rehearsal break, and in the middle of them, an auletes who is usually identified as the famous Pronomos. The musician’s lifetime is dated most probably to 470–c. 390 BC. According to Pausanias, a statue of Pronomos, also from Thebes, was erected in his city’s acropolis.68 Pausanias does not mention the inscription that accompanied the statue, but we find it recorded in the Anthology of Planudes. The similarity between the two texts is undeniable:69

Ἑλλὰς μὲν Θήβας νικᾶν προέκρινεν ἐν αὐλοῖς·

Θῆβαι δὲ Προνόμον, παῖδα τὸν Οἰνιάδου.

Hellas awarded victory on the aulos to Thebes,

but Thebes to Pronomos, son of Eniades.⁷⁰

The mention of Hellas in the first line of Potamon’s epitaph indicates that we are dealing with a Panhellenic victory, probably in the Pythia.⁷¹ I make very brief mention of the value of this information about the families of artists, the reference to a skill like playing the aulos being passed on from fathers to sons. In studying the inscription dedicated to Potamon, we are fortunate to have the surviving stele, which represents father (Olympichos, father of Potamon, is recorded as a disciple of Pindar 72) and son, each of them with their musical instrument in hand. Again we find the problem that I have spoken of on other occasions, the difficulty of identifying the deceased: in a scene where we see an older man seated, grasping the hand of a younger man who stands at his side, only the text of the epitaph reveals that they are father and son, and that the son is the one who has died, the one to whom the memorial is dedicated.

Regarding the wife, Patrokleia, her name appears at the end, apparently extra metrum. Considering her name to be inscribed later than the rest of the epitaph,⁷³ two interpretations have been made: that she was the one who, some time after the memorial had been erected, wished to establish herself as its dedicant, or, that her name was inscribed when Patrokleia herself died. In any case, the tribute to Potamon is based on professional merits, not family virtues, as can be seen in the content of the epitaph as well as in the stele image.

Let us look now at another intriguing epitaph: dedicated to a man named Telemachos, the epigram offers a dialogue between him and his mother, buried beside him:

(i) Τηλέμαχος | Σποδοκράτος | Φλυεύς.

(ii) ὢ τὸν ἀειμνήστου σ᾿ἀρετᾶς παρὰ πᾶσι πολίταις|

κλεινὸν ἔπαινον ἔχοντ᾿ἄνδρα ποθεινότατον|

παισὶ φίλει τε γυναικί. – τάφο δ᾿ἐπὶ δεξιά, μῆτερ, |

κεῖμαι σῆς φιλίας οὐκ ἀπολειπόμενος.

(iii) Ἱερόκλεια| Ὀψιάδου | ἐξ Οἴου.⁷⁴

(i) Telemachos, son of Spoudokrates of Phlya.

(ii) Oh, you who have earned a clear tribute among all citizens

because of your ever-remembered excellence, O man sorely missed

by your children and your beloved wife! ‘I rest, mother, at the right

of your grave, not straying from your affection.’

(iii) Hierokleia, daughter of Opsiades of Oion.

The excellence of Telemachos is celebrated, to be remembered always, aeimnestou (ἀειμνήστου), not only by his family, but also by his fellow citizens. What is especially remarkable is that the verb leipo (λείπω) and its compounds, ‘to abandon’, so common in funerary epigraphy, are used here in the negative (φιλίας οὐκ ἀπολειπόμενος, ‘without abandoning you, without straying from your affection’), in order to construct an image of filial love and label a family plot.

Finally, the epitaph of Daiikrates exalts the deceased’s sense of justice. His wife and children say goodbye without tears, since death came at its proper time:

(i) Δαιικράτης| Δημοκράτους | Μιλητοπολίτης.

(ii) [π]ολλ[ο]ῖς ἀ‹φ›νηὸν δαίμων βίον ὤπασε προῖκ[α], |

παύροισιν δὲ ἔτυμογ κτῆμα δικαιοσύνην, |

ἧς μέρος οὐκ ἐλάχιστον ὅδε ζωοῖσι μετασ[χὼν] |

Δαιοκράτης (sic) κοινοῦ (sic) τέρμα ἐπέρησε βίου, |

οἰκείαις δ᾿ἐγ χερσὶ τέκνων ἀλόχου τε ἀδ[κ]ρυ[τὶ] |

[ε]ὐξυνέτου Μοίρας εἰς τὸ χρεὼν δδοται.⁷⁵

(i) Daiikrates,⁷⁶ son of Demokrates, citizen of Miletus

(ii) To many men divinity has granted the gift of a life of riches,

but to few the real possession of justice;

After having taken part in no small share of this while with the living,

Daiokrates reached the end of life that is common to all;

in the intimate hands of his children and wife, without tears,

he surrenders to the necessity of a timely Moira.

The translation ‘a timely Moira’ is not literal, but I feel it captures the sense of the term euxynetos (εὐξύνετος). The idea of something that is well understood, applied to Hades, indicates here that death has arrived at its proper time, something that we also observe in the fact that the children take care of their father. This use is more clearly seen if we compare it to the epitaph of a child, from the same era, whose last verse says θνήισκω δυσξυνέτωι δαίμονι χρησάμενος,77 which we might translate as ‘I die the victim of an untimely daimon’, a daimon that in this case ‘is not well understood’.

As a final consideration, we can say that not only are there very few examples of an allusion to the wife of the deceased in his epitaph, but when this does occur, she by no means occupies a place of prominence. Of the three examples given, the first is an exceptional case, as we have seen, focused on praise of a well-known musician; in the second, wife and children share the verse and the pain, but the real protagonist is the mother of the deceased; finally, in the last epitaph, first priority is given to praise of the deceased’s sense of justice, and afterward to the pious role of wife and children.

I have found no fifth-century BC epitaph that mentions the wife of the deceased, just as we saw that only one of the female epitaphs from that century, the one from Chios, makes mention of a husband. This would confirm the idea that only in the fourth century BC do extended family relations (beyond filiation) take on greater significance in the epitaphs.

It should also be stated, in order to keep our perspective free of distortion, that I have limited myself to epitaphs that make explicit mention of the deceased’s status as spouse, whether man or woman. There are also epitaphs of women that refer to their profession, for example, nurses and midwives; in all likelihood they were also wives, even though their memorial does not mention it. However, the preceding discussion was based on an explicit reference to the marital relationship: in short, I have wished to expose the relative importance, for men and women, of being married.