Friday, October 07, 2022

 

Epitaph of Symmachus

Inscriptiones Graecae II² 10510, tr. Christos C. Tsagalis, Inscribing Sorrow: Fourth-Century Attic Funerary Epigrams (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), p. 239:
(i) Symmachos, son of Simon, from Chios.
(ii) Symmachos, having rejoiced the most in his life and having experienced
the least of sadness, after arriving at the furthest end of old age,
of Chian offspring with respect to his family, his father (being) Simon,
he lies dead in Cecropian land.
Symmachos' fatherland is Chios, rejoicing
in the beautiful-foliage saplings of the vine that is full of grapes,
but it is Athens, most dear to both gods and men,
that has hidden your dead body in its lap.

(i) Σύμμαχος Σίμωνος Χῖος.
(ii) πλεῖστα μὲν εὐφρανθεὶς βιότωι, λύπαις δὲ ἐλαχίσταις
   χρησάμενος, γήρως τέρμα μολὼν πρὸς ἄκρον,
Χῖος μὲν γενεὰν βλαστών, πατρὸς δὲ Σίμωνος,
   Σύμμαχος ἐν δαπέδοις Κεκροπίας ἐκλίθην.
ἡ μὲν καλλικόμοις πτόρθοις βοτρυώδεος οἴνης        5
   Χῖος ἀγαλλομένη Συμμάχωι ἐστὶ πατρίς.
αἱ δὲ θεοῖσι μάλιστα φίλαι θνητοῖσί τε Ἀθῆναι
   σῶμα σὸν ἐγ κόλποις κρύψαν ἀποφθίμενον.


8 ἀποφθίμενον lapis: ἀποφθιμένου "melius dixisset poeta" Kaibel
Also in Georg Kaibel, Epigrammata Graeca ex Lapidibus Conlecta (Berlin: Reimer, 1878), p. 29 (number 88), Werner Peek, Griechische Vers-Inschriften, Vol. I: Grab-Epigramme (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1955), p. 625 (number 1987), and Peter A. Hansen, Carmina Epigraphica Graeca Saeculi IV a. Chr. n. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1989), p. 92 (number 606).

Marco Fantuzzi, "Typologies of Variation on a Theme in Archaic and Classical Metrical Inscriptions," in Manuel Baumbach et al., edd., Archaic and Classical Greek Epigram (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 289-310 (at 304), regards it as two separate epigrams (1-4, 5-8, anticipated by Kaibel).

On naming both the homeland and the place of burial, see Alan H. Sommerstein, The Tangled Ways of Zeus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 196-197.



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