Epitaph
IGCyr025600
Trismegistos ID: 738266
Source Description
Support
Marble base with mouldings of eggs and darts on top and below (dimensions unknown).
Layout
Inscribed on front face.
Letters
Height unknown: carefullly carved lettering with slight serifs.
Place of Origin
Findspot.
Date
First half of third century B.C. (lettering)
Findspot
Found before 1933 at Cyrene pleiades; HGL : undetermined Necropolis (Oliverio); presumably North Necropolis (Thorn).
Present Location
Not found.
Text constituted from
Transcription from previous editor.
Bibliography
Oliverio, 1933-1936 Oliverio, G., 1933-1936, Documenti antichi dell'Africa Italiana, II, fasc. 1-2, Bergamo - see in bibliography , p. 114, n. 100, fig. 56, whence SEG Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, Leiden, then Amsterdam, 1923-1971, then 1979- - see in bibliography , 9.212. Cf. Beschi, 1970 Beschi, L., 1970, Divinità funerarie cirenaiche, Annuario della Scuola Archeologica di Atene e delle Missioni Italiane in Oriente (ASAA)47-48, 133-341 - see in bibliography , p. 204 (date of the base); Thorn-Thorn, 2009 Thorn, D.M., Thorn, J.C. (eds.), 2009, A Gazetteer of the Cyrene Necropolis from the original notebooks of John Cassels, Richard Tomlinson and James and Dorothy Thorn, Studia Archaeologica161, Roma - see in bibliography , p. 140.
Apparatus
1 Oliverio, 1933-1936 Oliverio, G., 1933-1936, Documenti antichi dell'Africa Italiana, II, fasc. 1-2, Bergamo - see in bibliography , SEG Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, Leiden, then Amsterdam, 1923-1971, then 1979- - see in bibliography , Fraser-Matthews, 1987 Fraser, P.M., Matthews, E. (eds.), 1987, Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, I: The Aegean Islands, Cyprus, Cyrenaica, Oxford - see in bibliography , Marengo, 1991 Marengo, S.M., 1991, Lessico delle iscrizioni greche della Cirenaica, Studi pubblicati dall’Istituto italiano per la Storia antica49, Roma - see in bibliography Ξανθίς
French translation
Xanthis fils de Polyklès.
English translation
Xanthis son of Polykles.
Italian translation
Xanthis figlio di Polykles.
Commentary
The lettering suggests a date in the 1st half of the third century B.C., while Beschi would bring the base down somewhat later.
The name Ξάνθις is here more probably a masculine in -ι-, short form of compound names like Ξάνθιππος and alike, rather than a feminine in -ίδ- (see Masson, 1987 Masson, O., 1987, Remarques d’onomastique cyrénéenne, quelques noms masculins en -ις, in Cirene e i Libyi: Atti del Simposio Internazionale, Roma-Urbino, 13-16 aprile 1981, Quaderni di Archeologia della Libya (QAL)12, 245-248 - see in bibliography ), a type that is not at all common in Cyrenaica.
The Thorns supposed this base to come from the North Necropolis on the assumption that the Italian archaeologists worked only on the part before World War II.
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