What’s Up with Ancient Greek Epitaphs

[svat]

    He slept beneath the moon
    He basked beneath the sun;
    He lived a life of going-to-do,
    And died with nothing done.

— James Albery's epitaph for himself (that I remember because I can relate to it).

[cafard]

Those who like epigrams may enjoy the poetry of J.V. Cunningham. His Collected Poems & Epigrams include "A Century of Epigrams", which in turn include someproposed epitaphs--for himself, and imagined others.

[Veen]

This article is written in an irritating style, as if the writer were half embarrassed to be discussing something so arcane as Greek epigraphs and they feel compelled to knowingly wink at the reader about the silliness of it all.

[jccalhoun]

Agreed. I don't even know what the point of the article was except to define epitaph and epigram.

[Jun8]

Aha, the joy of seeing The Greek Anthology here on a Friday! I don't have a copy of that (because Loeb books are expensive, even used, but full text is here: https://archive.org/stream/greekanthology01newyuoft/greekant...) but for our Ancient Greek II class they had us buy A Hellenistic Anthology (https://www.amazon.com/Hellenistic-Anthology-Cambridge-Greek...), which is an abridged version with a ton (2/3 of the book) of commentary to help you along.

Although this book has 12 pages of selected epigrams, if you are like me, after some years the only one that stays in memory will be a dialogue (number 31), between a prostitute a a prospective client, using natural, everyday speech. This surely must be the earliest such written transaction.

[germinalphrase]

What’s the dialogue?

[B1FF_PSUVM]

"Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee."

At the end of this piece, that's what my brain dredged up from the opposite corner of the ring, so to speak.

[cafard]

'8 The epigrams of “Gregory of Nazianzus” (whoever he was)'

He was a most influential and well-known theologian. It is curious to learn that his poetry was thought worth collecting.

[wolfi1]

just as a sidenote regarding epitaphs, there is museum in tyrol, which collected funny epitaphs: https://www.tyrol.tl/en/highlights/museums-and-exhibitions/c...