Anon.

Selections from The Last Word: Ancient Greek Epitaphs*

I. Anonymous Epitaphs of No Known Date

Anonymous epitaphs and dedications were already common in ancient Greece when the first lyric poets began writing in the seventh century B.C.E. Chiseled on marble pillars, incised on votive tablets, these spare verse memorials supplied the basis for a much later invention, the literary epigram. No one knows who wrote the first examples. No one is sure of their age.
Many early cultures marked their graves with names and unremarkable sentiments. The best of the Greek epitaphs are different. Small vivid time-capsules, they convey their brief memorials with surprising directness in unconventional voices that still retain a modern ring. Many thousands of these verses have survived, ranging across the spectrum of Greek society. Here we meet generals, admirals, soldiers, sailors, philosophers, poets, priests, playwrights, paupers, fishermen, farmers, physicians, merchants, elders, infants, teachers, musicians, astronomers, tyrants, virgins, misers, undertakers, drunks, tycoons, crones, slaves, actors, dolphins, horses, insects, and farm animals, as well as people of no stated rank or occupation. Reading a good Greek epitaph, we learn a little something of Greek life.
Note: Numerals and initials below each English version indicate the collection where the original Greek may be found. The numbers standing on their own refer to the volume and entry number (not page number) of the Greek as it appears in the Loeb Classical Library edition of the Greek Anthology.
-Michael Wolfe, translator

*The Last Word is to be published in 2009.

    My name is Dionysius of Tarsus.
    I was sixty when I died. I never married.
    I wish my father hadn’t married either.

    7.309


Lines on a Pillar Depicting Ampharéte Holding Her Grandchild

    I hold my daughter’s young child lovingly,
    The one I held on my lap while we were living
    Back in the days when we blinked at the bright sun,
    The one I still hold here, though we have gone.

    C.W.C.  No. 23


    I, unhappy Sophocles,
    Entered Hades grinning
    Because I swallowed Sardinian celery
    [A poison that contracts the throat and lips].
    And so I died, and others otherwise,
    But all of us somehow or other.

    7.621


    The way down to Hades is straight,
    Whether one starts from Athens or the Nile.
    Don’t be upset if you die far from home.
    From every quarter a fair breeze blows
    Straight to the land of the dead.

    10.3


    I am dead, yet I await you.
    You will wait for someone else.
    A single death waits for everybody.

    7.342