Article1989

Rituals in stone: early Greek grave epigrams and monuments

166 citations0/0 files storedThe Journal of Hellenic Studies

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Classical Antiquity Studies Classical Studies and Philology Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to increase our understanding of what archaic verse epitaphs meant to contemporary readers. Section I suggests their fundamental message was praise of the deceased, expressed in forms characteristic of poetic encomium in its broad, rhetorical sense, i.e., praise poetry. In section II, the conventions of encomium in the epitaphs are compared to the iconographic conventions of funerary art. I conclude that verse inscriptions and grave markers, not only communicate the same message of praise, but do so in a formally parallel manner. Section III, drawing on Pindar as a preserver of archaic thinking, attributes the parallelism between verse epitaph and grave marker to their common debt to funerary ritual. The epigrams will be seen to share with their monuments the goal of memorializing this ritual.

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References

1975The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition 1979Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry 1986Early Greek elegy, symposium and public festival 1955The Classification of Greek Lyric Poetry 1943Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs 1982Further Greek Epigrams 1982The Best of the Achaeans - Gregory Nagy: The Best of the Achaeans. Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry. Pp. xvi + 392. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980. £9 ($18.75).1972Greek Burial Customs

Cited by

1990Explaining the Epigraphic Habit in the Roman Empire: The Evidence of Epitaphs 2005Solon and Early Greek Poetry 2003Written Texts and the Rise of Literate Culture in Ancient Greece 1991The Iconography of Mourning in Athenian Art 1993The Tomb of Aias and the Prospect of Hero Cult in Sophokles 2005Pindar's Songs for Young Athletes of Aigina 2005Solon and early Greek poetry the politics of exhortation

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