Greek funerary art seeks beauty and exalts excellence, arete. Stelai and statues stand along the road with the intent that the passer-by would pause, contemplate, remember and mourn. These are retrospective monuments in the sense that they represent those no longer present, using the best image of what they were in life: splendid athletes, valiant warriors, maidens of promise, loving mothers. These idealized images, not at all realistic, serve not so much to reflect a determined social organization as to actually construct it. To the extent that they look towards the future, they do not speak of punishment or reward, and certainly do not denigrate this life in favour of a better one: if any immortality is imagined, it is the immortality of renown (kleos) attained from the particular virtue commemorated in the epigram, and, in no small measure, from the skill of the artist commissioned for the monument.
In the pages that follow, I will take time to pause at some of these Greek memorials of the Archaic and Classical periods. Although my interest is primarily a literary one, the epitaphs are much better understood in the few cases where their corresponding image, statue or stele is preserved. Naturally, I have taken a selection of epigrams from the extensive corpus, a sample significant in size, not overlooking any of the fundamental examples, and giving priority to those cases where the whole monument ensemble is preserved, both text and image. From this evidence I hope to draw out information about the society that created it, giving attention to the parameters of age, gender and social status. This study is structured around the presentation of such information, ordered within its historical and chronological context.
Chapters 1 (The funerary landscape: a reflection of the world of the living), and 2 (The literary form: tears of Simonides … and of Pindar) present the texts and their context, the type of literature that these funerary epigrams represent, and the archaeological landscape in which they are embedded. To expand our field of view, in both time and space, I begin with the archaeological landscape, outlining briefly the evolution of Greek funerary customs and the general traits of the art that emerges from them.
Monuments from the Archaic age are the focus of the next chapter (Chapter 3: Phrasikleia, forever a maiden. Kroisos, whom raging Ares destroyed), focusing especially on the funerary statues that nobles dedicated to their deceased youths. Special attention is given to two exceptional monuments, those of the maiden Phrasikleia and of Kroisos the young warrior, their funerary statues surviving together with the brief elegiac distich of the epitaph.
The Classical age is marked by the appearance of the splendid Attic stelai, attributed by most scholars to the same artists who worked on the reconstruction of the Athenian acropolis after the destruction of the Persian Wars. At this time, the epigrams are somewhat longer than in Archaic times. These funerary monuments target a more diverse social group than those of the Archaic age. The present study focuses on the epitaphs of individuals in the more significant stages of life, where gender differences are most marked. Thus, setting aside childhood and old age, I consider youths who died before their time (Chapter 4: How to deprive the year of its spring). I also study epitaphs that are more unusual in that it is not a family member who makes the dedication but where intimate friendship has prompted commemoration (Chapter 5: Immortal remembrance of friends). The next chapter focuses on the epitaphs of husbands and wives (Chapter 6: Wives and their masters). I devote some space to two types of funerary epigrams that share the unusual element of explicitly mentioning the cause of death: death in childbirth and death at sea. While the first case is linked naturally to the female gender, the second predominantly (though not exclusively) belongs to men (Chapter 7: Powerful enemies: childbirth, the sea).
Finally, the last chapter (Chapter 8: Rewards for piety … next to Persephone) focuses on eschatological allusions in funerary epigraphy. In the fourth century especially, we begin to find references to rewards in the hereafter for having attained piety, eusebeia. Interestingly, certain expressions that now appear for the first time in inscriptions bear some resemblance to expressions used in the famous lamellae aureae, focusing on Persephone, Queen of the Underworld.
Most of the evidence in this book comes from Attica, and the Kerameikos remains a fascinating area. However, excavations continue in different parts of Greece, bringing to light works of great interest. I often include this information in a peripheral way to round out the chapters presented here and to put into perspective the tentative nature of the conclusions offered here. If the archaeological funerary landscape reflects the world of the living, then social and historical differences between one region and another are logically manifest in their necropoleis.
It seems justifiable to consider only the metrical epitaphs: they constitute a very extensive but manageable corpus (not the case if we were to consider all epitaphs) and have considerable documentary value. The non-metrical epitaphs convey very little information: the name of the deceased, sometimes his or her place of birth or affiliation, and little more.
Only a small selection of the preserved epigrams will be analysed here, but I have tried to ensure that the sample is relevant. In both the selection and the commentary, I have turned my attention to the aspects that in my opinion have been the most neglected, and to details that enable general claims to be tested, for example that death before marriage was a theme exclusive to the tombs of young women, that the people who dedicated epitaphs always had family ties to the deceased, or that funerary epigraphy abounds in references to the separation of soul and body after death. A chronological perspective is useful to review and clarify these claims. The fact that I examine private rather than public epigrams is reflected in the structure of this volume: after the first and second introductory chapters, the third focuses on Archaic epitaphs, basically from the sixth century BC, while the vast majority of the epigrams studied in subsequent chapters are from the fourth century BC, with a few exceptions from the late fifth century BC. This leap forward in time, and the fact that most of the epigrams selected are from Attica, necessarily leaves out epitaphs from much of the fifth century BC, a period in which the victorious atmosphere that followed the Greco-Persian Wars prompted the most important cities, especially Athens, to commission epigrams for the war dead,1 and the importance of private memorials waned. Public memorials for the war dead, for which there is an abundant and recent bibliography, are not analysed here.2
The epigraphic and iconographic sources used here are listed along with the rest of the bibliography at the end of this study; however, I wish to briefly mention the primary works that are constantly cited throughout these pages.
Peter Allan Hansen’s publications, Carmina Epigraphica Graeca saeculorum VIII–V a. Chr. n. and Carmina Epigraphica Graeca saeculi IV a. Chr. n., are taken as the documentary basis for this study. The author collects metrical epigrams, whether funerary or not, from the eighth to the fourth centuries BC. This work is cited as CEG in the present study, as is customary in all studies that draw from it.
One wide-ranging publication of Greek metrical epigrams from all eras and geographic locations is Greek Verse Inscriptions. Epigrams on Funerary Stelae and Monuments, by Werner Peek. This was the standard reference work before Hansen’s publication, and is still used widely today, although many of its reconstructions have been criticized. The epitaphs cited throughout these pages also include their equivalent as shown in this publication, indicated with GVI.
Only rarely will I refer to epitaphs from the third century BC. In this case, Peek’s publication mentioned above has been used, complemented by the more recent publication by Élodie Cairon, Les épitaphes métriques hellénistiques du Péloponnèse à la Thessalie, who compiles metrical funerary epigrams from peninsular Greece (Attica and Thessaly represent two thirds of the whole), from the death of Alexander the Great until the publication of the Garland of Philippus, c. 40 AD.
A consideration of Anne-Marie Vérilhac’s work, ΠΑΙΔΕΣ ΑΩΡΟΙ, Poésie Funéraire, is also a requirement for our topic of study. Her book covers funerary epigrams from all eras and locations that commemorate boys and girls who suffered an untimely death. Her focus is on children rather than youths, and the timeframe is excessively wide; nonetheless, I have taken this work into account for my study.
Finally, I have reviewed the corresponding volumes of the Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum (SEG) for the more important epigraphic discoveries that have appeared since the Hansen publication. These advances considerably enrich the known data and can force us to reconsider instances that might otherwise be thought of as ‘exceptional’. In short, they remind us that, of all categories, the unicum, the hapax, is most unstable.
One of the first historical studies on the origin and interpretation of Attic funerary stelai is K. Friis Johansen’s work, The Attic Grave-Reliefs of the Classical Period. An Essay in Interpretation, still a fundamental resource. Its author poses many of the open questions regarding the funerary stelai, seemingly simple and classifiable works of art. Johansen wonders, for example, who the deceased person is in grave-reliefs of couples or family groups, where we have no epigram that clarifies the situation. From Johansen’s historical perspective he establishes that the seated posture of the deceased person, a norm in the Archaic period, is not applicable in the Classical period. Also significant to this study is the still unresolved debate as to the meaning of dexiosis: a gesture of farewell, a gesture of encounter (depending on whether we consider the encounter to take place in this world, with the graveside visit, or in the other world). Johansen interprets it as a gesture occurring within the close family relationship of the characters in the scene.
Another reference volume is Gisela M.A. Richter’s The Archaic Gravestones of Attica, which reproduces and discusses the corpus of Attic stelai from the seventh and sixth centuries BC. When the stele is accompanied by an inscription, the study is supplemented with an epigraphic commentary by Margherita Guarducci. Richter also wrote two fundamental works on korai and kouroi: Korai. Archaic Greek Maidens. A Study of the Development of the Kore Type in Greek Sculpture, and Kouroi. Archaic Greek Youths. A Study of the Development of the Kouros Type in Greek Sculpture.
In addition to these pioneering works, one of the key names associated with the study of funerary monuments as a whole (image and inscription) is that of Christoph W. Clairmont, Gravestone and Epigram: Greek Memorials from the Archaic and Classical Period. Here Clairmont presents a corpus of the Archaic funerary monuments, whether decorated with reliefs or paintings, where both image and epigram are preserved. Although he presents ninety-two pieces in total, a quarter of these are too fragmented and of little use. Attica, as always, is the source of more and better examples. More recently, Clairmont published Classical Attic Tombstones, a nine-volume reference work that reproduces and discusses Attic stelai from the Classical Age. In this monumental publication, the author inevitably refers to the devastating article by Georges Daux3 that critiqued Clairmont’s initial study from years before. While accepting some criticisms, Clairmont defends himself, not without reason, by pointing out the fruitfulness of his pioneering work. In this line, Clairmont mentions some of the titles that had appeared since his 1970 work, which demonstrate the viability and interest of the joint study of stelai and epigrams. In fact, in his new work, he clarified some observations made in his first work, where he often showed scepticism in regard to the relationship between text and image. An evaluation of Clairmont’s contribution to the study of Greek funerary art was the object of an interesting colloquium published by Geneviève Hoffmann, Les pierres de l’offrande. Autour de l’œuvre de Christoph W. Clairmont. Both of Clairmont’s studies are cited throughout the following pages, indicated by ‘Clairmont’, when referring to his first work, or CAT, when referring to the second.
The texts that I am going to analyse are first presented in the original Greek, followed by an English translation to make them accessible to the reader. I understand translation to have a merely instrumental value: it is neither the purpose nor the result of a study such as this. When offering translations of highly complex texts, as in our case where the texts are cultural artefacts, the result usually involves the translator’s own interpretation. In my case, I have tried to leave interpretation to the commentary, and maintain a certain neutrality in the translation, as far as possible. Thus, for each of the terms that belong to the usual lexicon of epitaphs (and therefore, to the cultural context that concerns us), I have opted for a single translation that I maintain throughout.
Let us consider this more closely. A large proportion of the terms used in the epitaphs refer to a cultural world and system of values that only correspond to our own in part, perhaps very little at all. At times I have tried to close the gap between the original and the translated text by including notes and explanations, sometimes historical, sometimes etymological. To illustrate this, let us consider two terms, arete (ἀρετή) and sophrosyne (σωφροσύνη), whose frequent appearance in funerary poetry warrants some mention in this preamble. I have chosen to translate arete as ‘excellence’. No matter how great the difference between the Homeric hero and the noble whose funerary stele stands along the road, excellence in one and the other is sung alike. Arete is the skill to stand out in something, it is the set of attributes and abilities that confer preeminence upon the one who possesses them; their owner becomes aristos. Again, whether we refer to the warriors of the Iliad or aristocrats of the Archaic age, to be aristos is to ‘be spoken of’ as aristos, bringing us to another crucial concept, that of kleos, or renown, the driving force behind the epic, and the ultimate motivation of funerary art.4 As for sophrosyne, its translation presents a different type of problem. The term refers to ‘good sense’, ‘good judgement’ or ‘prudence’. I translate this systematically as ‘good judgement’, and thereby make no artificial distinction between male and female sophrosyne. Certainly, the Greeks – and yes, we ourselves – have different ideas about what it means for a woman to have good judgement and what it means for a man. We often find translations that overrun any nuances, and superimpose our own prejudices, ascribing them to the Ancient Greeks; sophrosyne in the epitaphs of men is translated as ‘intelligence’ or ‘good judgement’, and in the epitaphs of women, as ‘prudence’ or ‘modesty’, doing an injustice to these texts where men and women were praised in the same terms. The undeniable differences between what would be considered – then and now – a judicious man or a judicious woman, do not take the shape of two virtues with different names. In any case, translating always means making a choice; by attempting to avoid what I consider common translation errors, it is likely that I fall into others. It is up to the reader to point these out, but the reader can be assured that the English term ‘excellence’ always corresponds to the Greek ἀρετή, and ‘good judgement’ to σωφροσύνη. In short, the intent is to offer a more accessible version of the Greek text.
There is another term that causes even greater problems: psyche (ψυχή). The English word soul, with its long Platonic, Neo-Platonic and Christian tradition, is inseparable from the condition of immortality. To believe in the existence of the soul is practically the same as believing that there is something eternal that remains after physical death. But this is not true of the Greek term ψυχή, that last breath that escaped from the mouth or the wounds of Homeric heroes in their dying moment. Separation from the body did not imply that the soul continued to exist, or more precisely, did not imply immortality; it might live on, we do not know for how long, as a ghost in Hades that attains neither reward nor punishment for its life on Earth. Immortality of the soul was not preached until the arrival of the Orphic, Eleusinian and Dionysian cults, and more extensively, from Plato onward. In fact, as Burkert indicates, it was no less than a revolution that the epithet used by Homer to characterize the gods (the Immortals) would become essential in the human being.5 The epitaphs we examine in this study occasionally speak of the separation of soma and psyche, body and soul, after death, but not of the immortality of the soul; only once is this explicitly affirmed, in an epitaph from the mid-fourth century BC, which we consider later.6 Despite all these considerations, I have preferred to maintain the convention of translating ψυχή as soul, but with the precautions expressed here, and occasional reminders later.
The epigraphic texts are reproduced in accordance with Peter Allan Hansen’s publication cited above, except when noted. For the interested reader, I include here a list of diacritics and their meanings, in common use by publishers of these types of texts:
| [αβ] | letters lost |
| ‹αβ› | emendation by the editor |
| {αβ} | superfluous letters deleted by the editor |
| [αβ] | letters erased or overwritten |
| †αβ† | locus desperatus |
|
letters damaged, but almost certain |
| […] | lacuna of a determined number of letters |
| [---] | lacuna of an undetermined number of letters |
| (i), (ii), (iii) | inscriptions engraved in the same stone, but separated |