<rs type="textType">Epitaph</rs> of a woman Greek Verse Inscriptions of Cyrenaica Università di Bologna GVCyr046 738936 gvcyr046 https://igcyr.unibo.it/gvcyr046

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Sandstone block ( 0.425 0.25 depth not measurable ). Probably cut down for re-use, since it is damaged along the upper and right edges; also chipped off at left.

 Inscribed on the exposed face which is intermittently pitted and rubbed. 0.015 - 0.02, very rough lettering; cursive epsilon, lunate sigma, square omega. Ptolemais: original location unknown. Fourth or fifth century A.D.

Found in 1962 at Ptolemais: re-used in an inner wall of the North-East quadrant of the crossroads with the Tetrastylon.

Seen by J.M. Reynolds in 1962 in situ.

Not seen by GVCyr team.

Marked-up according to the EpiDoc Guidelines version 8

Digital or digitized photographs Digitized other representations Arabic English French German Ancient Greek Transliterated Greek Modern Greek Hebrew Italian Latin Cyrenaica Libya Ţulmaythah Transcription from J.M. Reynolds' copy (CDL). It. translation; checked overall check finished text, apparatus, Fr. and Engl. translations, commentary file created; support, text
Bibliography

Not previously published.

Text οἵα προσπῆλθες ἀνδρὶ παρ ἀπὸ παρθενείου δεῦρο λέχους τοίαν σε τύμβος οὗτος ἔχει καθαρὰν ἀπὸ πάντων και ἐκ τῶν γυναικῶν νῦν ὀδυνῶν
Apparatus

telle tu t'avanças près de ton époux , quittant ta couche virginale , telle cette tombe te retient , pure de tous les et maintenant du fait des souffrances des femmes .

such you proceeded beside your husband , coming from your virgin's couch , such this tomb keeps you, , clear of all and now because of the womens' pains .

quale incedevi accanto al tuo sposo , lasciando il tuo letto virginale , tale questa tomba ti racchiude, , pura da tutti i e ora per le sofferenze delle donne .

Commentary

We follow J.M. Reynolds for the suggested date.

The vestiges allow to understand that this is a funerary poem for a young woman deceased very soon after her marriage. Either she did not share or will for ever escape the toils assigned to married and pregnant women, which is commonly described in verse epitaphs.

At line 1 the idea might be that coming from her father's home she settled with her husband.

At line 2 we restore λέχους on behalf of Eur. Tr. 676.

At line 4, instead of καί one should perhaps read either καιρῶν or κακ ῶν .

Metrical analysis: this fragmentary poem offers two types of meters: iambic catalectic trimeters are followed by dactylic segments that seem to be hemiepes (half pentameter). On this basis we calculated the lost parts at the end of verses, assuming that we had one line per verse. However this reconstruction is far from sure.