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9781421408040 Add to Cart Academic Inspection Copy

Cut These Words into My Stone:

Ancient Greek Epitaphs
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Cut These Words into My Stone offers evidence that ancient Greek life was not only celebrated in great heroic epics, but was also commemorated in hundreds of artfully composed verse epitaphs. They have been preserved in anthologies and gleaned from weathered headstones.Three-year-old Archianax, playing near a well,Was drawn down by his own silent reflection.His mother, afraid he had no breath left,Hauled him back up wringing wet. He had a little.He didn't taint the nymphs' deep home.He dozed off in her lap. He's sleeping still.These words, translated from the original Greek by poet and filmmaker Michael Wolfe, mark the passing of a child who died roughly 2,000 years ago. Ancient Greek epitaphs honor the lives, and often describe the deaths, of a rich cross section of Greek society, including people of all ages and classes paupers, fishermen, tyrants, virgins, drunks, foot soldiers, generalsand some non-peoplehorses, dolphins, and insects. With brief commentary and notes, this bilingual collection of 127 short, witty, and often tender epigrams spans 1,000 years of the written word. Cut These Words into My Stone provides an engaging introduction to this corner of classical literature that continues to speak eloquently in our time.

Translator's Note
Foreword, by Richard P. Martin
I. Anonymous Epitaphs of No Known Date
II. Late Archaic and Classical Periods: 600–350 BCE
III. Hellenistic Period: Age of Alexander, c. 323–100 BCE
IV. The Millennium: Pagan Roman Empire, 100 BCE–99 CE
V. Late Antiquity: Christian Roman Empire, 200–599 CE
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Biographies of the Poets

""As you turn the pages of this modest-seeming book you begin to succumb to magic. Each of these epitaphs is a poem that opens a window onto a life in Antiquity... If you wanted to find a single volume that gives a sense of the genius of the ancient Greeks, and reflects their influence on the cultural life of subsequent ages, you would be pushed to find anything better than this.""

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