{"id":137596,"date":"2019-06-27T08:56:40","date_gmt":"2019-06-27T12:56:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=137596"},"modified":"2019-06-27T09:58:00","modified_gmt":"2019-06-27T13:58:00","slug":"whats-up-with-ancient-greek-epitaphs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/06\/27\/whats-up-with-ancient-greek-epitaphs\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s Up with Ancient Greek Epitaphs"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Sleeping Girl<\/em>, by Yiannoulis Halepas, 1878 [Photo: Nikos Vatopoulos]<\/p><\/div>There are epitaphs, there are epigrams, and there are epigraphs. Creates a lot of confusion. (The other case like this, for me, is friable, frangible, and fungible. I\u2019ve given up all hope on that one.)<\/p>\n

So try and concentrate. An epigram<\/strong> is, strictly speaking, a little poem that makes a point. It doesn\u2019t necessarily dramatize; it doesn\u2019t necessarily have an image. But it has to say something. This is an epigram:<\/p>\n

THEIR SEX LIFE<\/p>\n

One failure on
\nTop of another<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Haikus are not epigrams. \u201cPigeons on the grass, alas\u201d is not an epigram. It might be clearer to say an epigram doesn\u2019t just make a point. An epigram scores a point.<\/p>\n

An epigraph<\/strong> is one of those little quotations you see at the beginning of a novel or, say, a T.\u2009S. Eliot poem. The epigraph to Anna Karenina<\/em> is from the Bible: \u201cVengeance is mine; I shall repay.\u201d The epigraph to Jude the Obscure<\/em> is \u201cThe letter killeth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Naturally, epigrams can be used as epigraphs, but let\u2019s not even. This article is about epitaphs. An epitaph<\/strong> is a little dab of poetry that you stick on a gravestone. It doesn\u2019t have to be about the deceased, but it usually is. Keats suggested a good one for himself, and they actually used it: \u201cHere lies one whose name is writ in water.\u201d That\u2019s not really a poem, but it\u2019s a little dab of poetry. It counts.<\/p>\n

Epitaphs are a good idea. You got your block of stone, you got the cutter standing there, chisel in hand, waiting for what to put. One of God\u2019s children has fallen; gotta write something. Give a pr\u00e9cis of his or her life in four lines. Or say how the person died. Remind people they\u2019re next. Anyhow, you have to say something.<\/p>\n

The ancient Greeks loved this. They made zillions of these things. In fact, a very large chunk of the book we call the Greek Anthology is nothing but epitaphs.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

What is the Greek Anthology? It\u2019s this ridiculously comprehensive book of itty-bitty Greek poems. It\u2019s divided into fifteen or sixteen \u201cbooks.\u201d The table of contents is a sketch. The level of agglutinative, improvised, cross-eyed incoherence is like something out of Borges. You remember that famous bit that knocked Michel Foucault half dead with pleasure, from the \u201cChinese\u201d Encyclopedia of Celestial Wisdom or whatever\u2014? Quote:<\/p>\n

This book [The Order of Things<\/em>, 1966] first arose out of a passage in Borges \u2026 [that] quotes a \u201ccertain Chinese encyclopaedia\u201d in which it is written that \u201canimals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Compare that with the TOC of the Greek Anthology:<\/p>\n

1 Christian epigrams<\/p>\n

2 Some guy\u2019s description of certain statues<\/p>\n

3 Inscriptions on some particular temple<\/p>\n

4 Various prefaces to the collections that were raided to produce this one<\/p>\n

5 Love and sex [*important]<\/p>\n

6 Votive inscriptions<\/p>\n

7 Epitaphs [*important]<\/p>\n

8 The epigrams of \u201cGregory of Nazianzus\u201d (whoever he was)<\/p>\n

9 Figure-of-speech epigrams<\/p>\n

10 Ethical ones<\/p>\n

11 Funny ones, or ones on the theme \u201cLet the good times roll\u201d<\/p>\n

12 Boy love [*important]<\/p>\n

13 Metrical curiosities<\/p>\n

14 Word games, riddles, prophesies<\/p>\n

15 Miscellaneous<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Also some versions have a sixteenth book of epigrams about paintings.<\/p>\n

I know what you\u2019re thinking. These \u201cbooks\u201d must be kind of short. Some of \u2019em are! But the epitaphs one (Book 7) is two hundred pages in the old Loeb translation. It\u2019s four hundred if you count the Greek originals, en face. (No point in counting those, however, since nobody can read \u2019em.)<\/p>\n

And what are those epitaphs like. Here, things get tricky. Most people who think they know the epitaphs in the Greek Anthology have read only selections, and the selections are misleading. They make you think Book 7 must be a compilation of austere and moving and above all authentic epitaphs\u2014poems copied straight off roadside stones in Thessaly. That\u2019s not what you find if you actually read the whole thing, floor to ceiling. The vast majority of epitaphs in the Greek Anthology are literary exercises. There was no stone, there was no corpse. It was like things now: there was a poet and there was a piece of paper. Unlike now, people understood meter.<\/p>\n

If one were to construct a TOC just for Book 7, it would be even more of a mess than the TOC for the anthology as a whole. There would be sections on:<\/p>\n