If anyone brings deceitful hands against this carving,Note the three asyndetic privative adjectives at the beginning of line 10.
he will die without children, without a tomb, without relatives.
εἴ τις τῆσδε γλυφῆς δολίας χ[ε]ῖρας προσενένκ[η]ι,
ἄτεκνος ἄτυμβος ἀνανχίστευτος ὀλ[ε]ῖται.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
Pages
▼
Monday, September 23, 2024
Curst Be He That Moves My Bones
Reinhold Merkelbach and Josef Stauber, edd., Steinepigramme aus dem griechischen Osten, Bd. 3: Der „Ferne Osten“ und das Landesinnere bis zum Tauros (München: K.G. Säur, 2001), p. 285, number 16/32/07 (epitaph of Montanus), lines 9-10 (my translation):