Lament in Verse Epitaphs from Hellenistic Itanos
Main Article Content
Abstract
Itanos on Crete produced a striking dossier of inscribed Hellenistic elegiac epitaphs. The three longest echo the motifs and dialogic or antiphonal structure of sung lament or literary representations of it, and they recall the circumstances of lament performance. Readers thus created a simulacrum of lament. Each section of Exákon’s epitaph (I. Cret. III.iv.37) exhibits a lament motif, the last spoken by the deceased; the text is thus dialogic, but themes echoing across sections generate antiphony. Léon’s companion epitaphs on two surfaces (I. Cret. III.iv.39) reinforce the dialogue between an anonymous mourner in A and the deceased in B, and the echoing of A’s lament motifs in B creates antiphony. Those epitaphs allude to lament contexts, but the three brothers’ epitaph (I. Cret. III.iv.38) focuses on their hero cult. These epigrams’ separation from actual lament and verbal evocation of it can be compared to literary epigram’s evocation of absent material reality (Peter Bing’s Ergänzungsspiel).
Downloads
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.es).
References
Alexiou, M. (2002). The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition. Second edition revised by D. Yatromanolakis and P. Roilos. Rowman and Littlefield.
Arft, J. T. (2022). Arete and the Odyssey’s Poetics of Interrogation: The Queen and her Question. Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192847805.001.0001
Bettenworth, A. (2007). The Mutual Influence of Inscribed and Literary Epigram. In P. Bing and J. S. Bruss (Ed.), Brill’s Companion to Hellenistic Epigram: Down to Philip (pp. 69-93). Brill. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789047419402_005
Bing, P. (1995). Ergänzungsspiel in the Epigrams of Callimachus. A&A, 41, 115-31. Updated: Bing, P. (2009). The Scroll and the Marble: Studies in Reading and Reception in Hellenistic Poetry (pp. 85-105). University of Michigan Press.
Bing, P., and Bruss, J. S. (Ed.). (2007). Brill’s Companion to Hellenistic Epigram: Down to Philip. Brill. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789047419402
Christian, T. (2015). Gebildete Steine: zur Rezeption literarischer Techniken in den Versinschriften seit dem Hellenismus, Hypomnemata 197. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht. DOI: https://doi.org/10.13109/9783666253225
Day, J. W. (1989). Rituals in Stone: Early Greek Grave Epigrams and Monuments. JHS, 109, 16-28. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/632029
Day, J. W. (2023). Elegy, Epigram, and the Complementarity of Text and Monument. In E. Angliker and I. Bultrighini (Ed.), New Approaches to the Materiality of Text in the Ancient Mediterranean: From Monuments and Buildings to Small Portable Objects, Archaeology of the Mediterranean World 4 (pp. 197-214). Brepols. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1484/M.AMW-EB.5.133906
Derderian, K. (2001). Leaving Words to Remember: Greek Mourning and the Advent of Literacy, Mnemosyne supplement 209. Brill. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789047400455
Estrin, S. (2016). Cold Comfort: Empathy and Memory in an Archaic Funerary Monument from Akraiphia. ClAnt, 35, 189-214. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/ca.2016.35.2.189
Estrin, S. (2023). Grief Made Marble: Funerary Sculpture in Classical Athens. Yale University Press.
Fantuzzi, M. (2008). La doppia gloria di Menas (e di Filostrato). In A. M. Morelli (Ed.), Epigramma longum: Da Marziale alla tarda antichità (vol. 2, pp. 603-622). Edizioni dell’Università degli Studi di Cassino.
Fantuzzi, M. (2010). Typologies of Variation on a Theme in Archaic and Classical Metrical Inscriptions. In M. Baumbach, A. Petrovic, and I. Petrovic (Ed.), Archaic and Classical Greek Epigram (pp. 289-310). Cambridge University Press.
Fantuzzi, M. and Hunter, R. (2004). Tradition and Innovation in Hellenistic Poetry. Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511482151
Garulli, V. (2008). L’epigramma longum nella tradizione epigrafica sepolcrale greca. A. M. Morelli (Ed.), Epigramma longum: Da Marziale alla tarda antichità (vol.2, pp. 623-662). Edizioni dell’Università degli Studi di Cassino.
Garulli, V. (2012). Byblos Lainee: Epigrafia, letteratura, epitafio, Eikasmos 20. Pàtron Editore.
González González, M. (2019). Funerary Epigrams of Ancient Greece: Reflections on Literature, Society, and Religion. Bloomsbury. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350062450
Greco, E., Kalpaxis, T., Schnapp, A., and Viviers, D. (1996). Travaux menés en collaboration avec l’École française en 1995: Itanos (Crète orientale). BCH, 120 (2), 941-952. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3406/bch.1996.7034
Greco, E., Kalpaxis, T., Schnapp, A., and Viviers, D. (1997). Travaux menés en collaboration avec l’École française en 1996: Itanos (Crète orientale). BCH, 121 (2), 809-824. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3406/bch.1997.7061
Greco, E., Kalpaxis, T., Schnapp, A., and Viviers, D. (1998). Travaux menés en collaboration avec l’École française en 1997: Itanos (Crète orientale). BCH, 122 (2), 585-602. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3406/bch.1998.7197
Griessmair, E. (1966). Das Motiv der Mors immatura in den griechischen metrischen Grabinschriften, Commentationes Aenipontanae 17. Wagner.
Hanink, J. (2010). The Epitaph for Atthis: A Late Hellenistic Poem on Stone. JHS, 130, 15-34. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0075426910000017
Hunter, R. (2019). Death of a Child: Grief Beyond the Literary? In M. Kanellou, I. Petrovic, and C. Carey (Ed.), Greek Epigram from the Hellenistic to the Early Byzantine Era (pp. 137-153). Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198836827.003.0009
Hunter, R. (Ed. and Comm.). (2022). Greek Epitaphic Poetry: A Selection. Cambridge University Press.
Kirstein, R. (2002). Companion Pieces in the Hellenistic Epigram. In M. A. Harder, R. F. Regtuit and G. C. Wakker (Ed.), Hellenistic Epigrams, Hellenistica Groningana 6 (pp. 113-135). Peeters.
Lattimore, R. (1962). Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs. University of Illinois Press.
Martínez Fernández, Á. (2012). Επιγραφές Πολυρρηνίας, Δημοσιεύματα του Αρχαιολογικού Δελτίου 103. Archaeological Resources and Expropriations Fund.
Mirto, M. S. (2012). Death in the Greek World: From Homer to the Classical Age, Oklahoma Series in Classical Culture 44, trans. A. M. Osborne. University of Oklahoma Press.
Morelli, A. M. (Ed.). (2008). Epigramma longum: Da Marziale alla tarda antichità, 2 vols. Edizioni dell’Università degli Studi di Cassino.
Peek, W. (1933). Korkyräische und kretishe Epigramme. Philologus, 88, 133-148. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1524/phil.1933.88.14.133
Russo, J., Fernández-Galiano, M., and Heubeck, A. (1992). A Commentary on Homer’s Odyssey, vol. III. Oxford University Press.
Schnapp-Gourbeillon, A., Tsigonaki, C., Duplouy, A., Schnapp, A., and Viviers, D. (2009). Recherches archéologiques à Itanos (Crète orientale), RA, 2009: Bulletin de la Société française d’Archéologie classique, 39, 2007-2008, 208-219.
Sens, A. (Ed. and Comm.). (2020). Hellenistic Epigrams: A Selection. Cambridge University Press.
Sporn, K. (2002). Heiligtümer und Kulte Kretas in klassischer und hellenistischer Zeit, Studien zu antiken Heiligtümern 3. Verlag Archäologie und Geschichte.
Squire, M. (2009). Image and Text in Graeco-Roman Antiquity. Cambridge University Press.
Viviers, D. (2011). Une cité crétoise à l’épreuve d’une garnison lagide: l’example d’Itanos. In J.-C. Couvenhes, S. Crouzet and S. Péré-Noguès (Ed.), Pratiques et identités culturelles des armées hellénistiques du monde méditerranéen, Hellenistic Warfare 3, Scripta Antiqua 38 (pp. 35-64). Ausonius.
Viviers, D., and Tsingarida, A. (2014). Facing the Sea: Cretan Identity in a Harbour-city Context: Some Remarks on the Early Development of Itanos. In F. Gaignerot-Driessen and J. Driessen (Ed.), Cretan Cities: Formation and Transformation, Aegis 7 (pp. 165-182). UCL Presses Universitaires de Louvain.
Wilhelm, A. (1950). Griechische Epigramme aus Kreta, SO supplement 13. Grøndahl and Son.
Wypustek, A. (2013). Images of Eternal Beauty in Funerary Verse Inscriptions of the Hellenistic and Greco-Roman Periods, Mnemosyne supplement 352. Brill. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004233201
Ypsilanti, M. (2017). Echoes of Hellenistic Epigrams in Inscriptional Epitaphs. In M. A. Harder, R. F. Regtuit, and G. C. Wakker (Ed.), Past and Present in Hellenistic Poetry, Hellenistica Groningana 21 (pp. 59-82). Peeters.