
What’s Up with Ancient Greek Epitaphs - merrier
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/06/27/whats-up-with-ancient-greek-epitaphs/
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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).

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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.

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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.

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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...](https://archive.org/stream/greekanthology01newyuoft/greekanthology01newyuoft_djvu.txt))
but for our Ancient Greek II class they had us buy _A Hellenistic Anthology_
([https://www.amazon.com/Hellenistic-Anthology-Cambridge-
Greek...](https://www.amazon.com/Hellenistic-Anthology-Cambridge-Greek-
Classics/dp/0521314259)), 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.

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germinalphrase
What’s the dialogue?

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pm215
A little digging through the look-inside preview suggests it's the one
labelled 5.46 in this list of epigrams by Philodemus:
[http://www.attalus.org/poetry/philodemus.html](http://www.attalus.org/poetry/philodemus.html)

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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.

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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.

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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...](https://www.tyrol.tl/en/highlights/museums-and-
exhibitions/cemetery-museum-kramsach/)

