Funerary Epigrams of Ancient Greece

Reflections on Literature, Society and Religion

Marta González González

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781350062443
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'architecture

Taking a wide selection of Greek funerary epigrams from the 6th to 4th centuries BC, this volume considers their historical and chronological contexts to draw out information about the society that created them. Using both Hansen's corpus of epigrams and wider examples, it gives priority to those cases where the whole monument ensemble is preserved, both text and image, enabling a much better understanding of the significance of the texts. A thematic structure within a broader chronological framework provides a valuable lens on the epigrams, allowing readers to compare particular types across the time period. After introducing the funerary landscape in which the selected epigrams fit, González briefly considers the literary form of epigrams as a foil for the rest of the book. The remaining chapters focus on epitaphs of individuals in the most significant stages of life, where gender differences are most marked: themes include untimely death, women and wives, friendship, piety and non-kin love. All epigrams are offered in Greek, followed by an English translation. The analysis focuses on the literary aspects of the epigrams, as well as on the information they provide about both society and religion of ancient Greece.

1

The Funerary Landscape: A Reflection of the World of the Living

The topic of the first chapter is the evolution of the funerary monument that bears the epitaphs. The funerary epigram was inscribed on the base of statues; in the case of the stelai, whether decorated or not, the epigram could be on the base or the body of the stele. This monument was in turn placed within a very specific setting, the necropolis, although funerary monuments have also been found in private settings, for example when families opted to bury their dead on their country estates.¹ I will briefly review the characteristics of these memorials, to help us better understand when and why the funerary monument evolved from a simple stone that marked the place of burial, to an iconic element with statues and reliefs that evoke the deceased. The final part of this chapter will refer also to funerary legislation, particularly the laws attributed to Solon; although they are not sumptuary laws in the strict sense, they do make a mark on the archaeological funerary landscape.

Funerary practices of the Ancient Greeks

The necropolis is a world of the dead that also reflects the world of the living. The study of the necropolis can help us to understand how a society is organized according to different classes of age, gender and wealth or social status. Our investigation begins with the funerary monuments of the sixth century BC and extends through the end of the fourth century BC, but it is advisable to review briefly the customs prior to this time, taking note of any indications of age, gender and status.²

Funerary customs were not exactly alike in all regions of Greece. Our study is based especially on material from Attica. In the Geometric age (c. 900–700 BC), as in the Archaic and Classical periods, both cremation and burial were customary. However, changes in preferences and customs can be detected from one period to another. Throughout the ninth century BC we find secondary cremation, in other words, a custom whereby the ashes remaining from cremation are collected from the pyre and placed in an amphora that afterwards is deposited in the pit with grave-goods; this in turn is covered with a small tumulus. Already around this time there is a verifiable difference between the graves of adults and of children,³ adopted apparently in all regions of Hellas: children were buried, not incinerated, and in Athens they were usually buried in the area of the future Agora and not in the Kerameikos.⁴ A symbolic code is also followed in order to distinguish male tombs (funerary neck-handled amphora and war-related grave-goods: spearheads, swords) from female tombs (funerary belly-handled amphora and grave-goods related to feminine adornment: spindles, gold jewellery). The fact that, in Attica, women’s graves display no less wealth than men’s, is a unique case in the Greek Iron Age. In the same period, male graves begin to predominate in the Kerameikos, and in the opinion of François de Polignac, this necropolis became a place for commemorating the public status of certain men. In other words, a selective access to funerary rites is already perceptible within the elite group.

As we enter the eigthth century BC, we observe a trend toward burial, although cremation continues as an aristocratic custom, following the well-known hero ritual – Patroclus, Hector – which will be recovered in the following century. The vessels that mark tombs become increasingly monumental in form, an innovation possibly due to aristocratic insistence on public commemoration for all their members, women included, whereas this privilege was previously reserved for a group of deceased males of the Kerameikos. The richest tombs are most prevalent in the rural demes.

With the beginning of the Archaic period, through the seventh century BC, we observe a number of important changes in funerary customs.⁵ Again we find cremation as the dominant practice, and we observe, especially in the Kerameikos necropolis, a restriction that excludes children and women from the practice of formal burial – an expression used to indicate the type of burial that can be analysed archaeologically.⁶ In this century, of the two types of Attic grave, those of adults and those of children, differences are seen in the method of burial (inhumation in the case of children, cremation for adults) and in the type of pottery found in the graves, when there are grave goods (Subgeometric pottery for children, Orientalizing pottery for adults). The archaeologist James Whitley, who has studied this matter in detail, suggests that formal burial of adults was in fact for men, evoking heroic funerary practices; if this is so, there would no longer be any place for female symbolism, and Attica would lose its uniqueness, rejoining the rest of Iron Age and early Archaic Greece, with customs that distinguish only between the graves of male adults and the graves of children. In this century, the grave-goods to which I have alluded are quite scarce; however, in connection with male graves we almost always find the placement of external offerings (the German term Opferrinnen has been adopted). These are not grave-goods strictly speaking, but rather cult offerings.⁷ Within these constructions we find evidence of the celebration of funerary banquets, including large quantities of pottery; these were most likely deposited and covered after being used in the cult celebration. Over the course of the seventh century BC, this became the usual practice in the Kerameikos; by the end of the century it had extended to other parts of Attica, and this custom makes it reasonable to interpret such remains as indication of some kind of tomb cult, according to Whitley. All the data point unmistakably to clearly political and elite connotations of the funerary space, monopoly of the agathoi, throughout the seventh century BC.⁸

As we pass to the sixth century BC, there are a few changes, but less abrupt than in the previous century. Cremation is no longer the norm in adult burials, and graves once again become the place where the deceased is left with his grave-goods. By contrast, Opferrinnen are much less frequent: the custom of constructing such repositories was already unusual around 600 BC, and became very rare by the middle of the sixth century BC. The vessels that marked tombs disappear for the most part; in contrast, we find stone stelai and statues of youths, kouroi and korai.⁹ With the appearance of the kore, linked to the clan-based aristocracy, the tombs of women recover their individuality, although only unmarried young women receive this recognition. Also worth mentioning is that the funerary monuments and inscriptions of this period are usually found associated with groups of tumuli throughout Attica, in areas such as Vourva, Velanideza (the Aristion stele), Anavyssos (the Kroisos kouros). While it is possible to speak of aristocratic family tombs in relatively small complexes such as Vourva, studies emphasize that Archaic and Classical burials in the Athenian necropolis of the Kerameikos did not follow any family-related pattern, but rather that of age or status. The enormous tumuli that were raised in the Kerameikos between 560 and 540 BC do not represent any blood relations, but instead are groupings according to status, groups with some shared identity – men who had drunk and fought together and were buried together — and so confirm the particular role of this necropolis as manifesting public funerary ideologies, distinct from family customs.¹⁰ Women would have no representation here.

The archaeological evidence of sixth-century BC Athens reveals a city where ostentation prevails in certain funeral ceremonies. In the Kerameikos, about 580 BC, a new mound was built over the seventh-century mounds, inaugurating a new series of burials, which culminated in the gigantic Mound G (c. 555–550 BC).¹¹ The same ostentation is a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The Funerary Landscape: A Reflection of the World of the Living
• 2 The Literary Form: Tears of Simonides … and of Pindar
• 3 Phrasikleia, Forever a Maiden. Kroisos, Whom Raging Ares Destroyed
• 4 How to Deprive the Year of Its Spring
• 5 Immortal Remembrance of Friends
• 6 Wives and Their Masters
• 7 Powerful Enemies: Childbirth, the Sea
• 8 Rewards for Piety … Next to Persephone
• Conclusions
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index of Inscriptions and Table of Concordances
• Index
• Copyright