Probably <rs type="textType" cert="low">honors</rs> Greek Verse Inscriptions of Cyrenaica Università di Bologna GVCyr057 738946 gvcyr057 https://igcyr.unibo.it/gvcyr057

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 Cyrene Museum 543 + 570 + 591

Three fragments of a white marble oblong block: fragment a, broken off on all sides but on the right ( 0.155 0.10 0.085 ); fragment b, broken off on all sides ( 0.125 0.075 0.075 ); fragment c, broken off at right, on top and at left and chipped off below, but preserving probably the original lower face ( 0.44 0.13 0.18 ). As photographed, fragments b and c seem to have been partly adjacent.

 Inscribed on one face in at least three lines (on fragment c the inscribed surface has dimensions 0.27 0.05 ). Average 0.015, letters well cut and pressed together: alpha with dropped bar, beta with larger lower loop, low delta with protruding right stroke, kappa with long oblique bars, pi with equal hastae, non-slanting sigma, phi with very tall hasta, horseshoe omega. Findspot. Second to third centuries A.D.

Found before 1930 at Cyrene: fragments b and c photographed in 1930 as from the Sanctuary of Apollo; findspot unrecorded for fragment a.

All three fragments seen by C. Dobias-Lalou in 1977 (and again in 2001 for fragment a) at Shahat: Cyrene Museum

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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 Shahat Transcription from stone (CDL) with help from J.M. Reynolds' copy. It. translation; checked overall check tagged metric and w, Fr. and Engl. translations, commentary support, text file created
Bibliography

Not previously published.

Text αι δίς σοι στέμμα φέρειν ἱερὸν λο ωνδεπαρους τε· ❧ , λυκάβας δ' οἶκον ἐπήϊα καλός.
Apparatus

δίς σοι δίσσοιalso possible

deux fois pour toi porter la couronne sacrée et les ; moi, la bonne année, je suis venue toucher ta maison.

twice for you to wear the sacred crown and the ; I, the good year, I came upon your house.

due volte per te portare la corona sacra e ; io, il buon anno, sono giunto alla tua casa.

Commentary

Fragments b and c may be seen joined together on an ancient archive photograph. It is J.M. Reynolds' credit to have suspected that all three fragments, which bear different inventory numbers and were observed separately by C. Dobias-Lalou, belong to the same stone.

J.M. Reynolds described the larger fragment (c) as from a moulded base. This seems the more puzzling that she also pointed out (as C. Dobias-Lalou did) that the inscribed face was only roughly dressed. The inscription was thus probably cut on a re-used block of which the opposite side is now lost.

The placement of loose fragment a is proposed without certainty on behalf of the iunctura στέμμα φέρειν, which would be a poetical equivalent of στεφανοφορέω, refering to a magistrate 'wearing a crown', most probably a priest.

The word λυκάβας used at the nominative as the subject of a 1st person verb at line 3, puzzling as it is, might develop the idea expressed elsewhere through the adjective καλλιέτης for an eponym priest whose year was successfull (see IRCyr C.223 l. 5, IRCyr C.224, IRCyr C.251, IRCyr C.336). If so, the οἶκος upon which this 'good year' occurred might be either Apollo's temple or a family house, the latter connected possibly with δίς σοι at line 1: the same family would have produced two priests 'of the good year'. However, the context is so lacunar that all this remains a pure hypothesis.

Line 3 is the most lacunar of all. The segment at the beginning might be read in several different manners. The τε at the end leads to suppose that another word at the accusative plural followed by another τε preceded the uncomplete word endign with ρους.

Metrical analysis: the small fragments offer a dactylic rhythm. Only at line 4 is a whole verse restorable and it would be a pentameter. However, as there is a leaf at the end of the preserved segment of line 3, we cannot know whether this marks the end of a verse or the end of a sentence inside a verse. We thus cannot be sure that the whole poem was made of elegiac couplets.