Honours or epitaph (?)
created: Transcription from editor.
source date: Perhaps fourth century BC
language: ar; en; fr; de; grc; grc-Latn; el; he
availability: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Deed Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. All citation, reuse or distribution of this work must contain a link back to DOI: https://doi.org/10.60760/unibo/igcyrgvcyr2 and the filename (IGCyr000000 or GVCyr000), as well as the year of consultation. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/)

From †Oliverio's papers [...], n. 15, whence [...], 20.746; [...], p. 369; [...], n. 2; [...], n. 681; [...] 003.

Ἀριστι[...]

μναμῆιον τα [...]
πάσαις νικη [...] [...]
ἦμεν καὶ τόδε [...]
σαμῆιον εὐτυχίας [...]

μναμῆιον[^a1] τα[...][^a2] νικη[...][^a3] ἦμεν[^a4] τόδε [...][^a5] σαμῆιον[^a6] εὐτυχίας [...][^a7]

[^a1: μναμῆιον | μναμήϊον]

[^a2: τα[...] | τάφωι ἀνδρὸς ἐφέστακ', ὅστις ὅτ' ἔζη]

[^a3: νικη[...] | νίκη πάντας ἑαῖς ἀρεταῖσι πολίτας· | νίκη [...]]

[^a4: ἦμεν | ἷμεν | ἠμὲν]

[^a5: τόδε [...] | τοδ[...] | τόδε γνοὺς καὶ κοινὸν χαῖρε προσείπας | τόδε [...]]

[^a6: σαμῆιον | σαμήϊον]

[^a7: εὐτυχίας [...] | εὐτυ[...] | εὐτυχῶν παρέρπ', ὁδοιπόρε. | Eὐτύχ[...]]

Aristi[...].

Mémorial de [...] victoire/ayant vaincu en toutes les [...] que ceci soit aussi [...] signe de sa réussite [...].

Aristi[...].

Memorial of [...] victory/having winned in all the [...] that this be also [...] sign of his success [...].

Aristi[...].

Memoriale di [...] vittoria/avendo vinto in tutte le [...] che questo sia anche [...] segno del suo successo [...].

أريستى [---]. نصب تذكاري [---]للنصر أو بعد الفوز في جميع ال[---] أن هذا يكون أيضًا [---] علامة على نجاحه [---].

For μναμῆιον and σαμῆιον, at ll. 2 and 5, instead of an epic reading with diaeresis, the reading of suffixe ῆιο as dissyllabic along with the dialect is more plausible. See [...], pp. 22-24. Both words are placed so as to create a meaningful echo. Those words would well appear in a funerary context and Peek's restorations clearly rely on such an interpretation. However the support of funerary verse is normally a base or a stele. A panel might better fit a honorific monument.

At line 4, Hansen's idea in [...] of a personal name indicating the person responsible for the monument is interesting although not proved. Εὔτυχος is the only name attested for the Greek period of Cyrenaica. Altogether we prefer for metrical reason the abstract noun meaning 'good luck, success'. Jointly with the idea of 'victory' (either with the name or with the verb), they are connected to the double function of the inscription, both intended to 'remember' and to 'give notice' of the deeds of Aristi[---]. The shape and dimensions might well fit the basis of one of the numerous reliefs with carriages of four horses that are now displayed in the Cyrene Museum.

Anyhow, the uncomplete personal name at line 1 was surely followed by the father's name. This shows that more than one half of each line of script is probably lost, whence a poem of four verses.

Metrical analysis: what we can say about those four lines is that they are all constituted of dactyls. We suppose that lines 3 and 5 were pentameters, but hexameters are not impossible. In σαμῆιον the diphthong of the second syllable (see above) is abbreviated in the hiatus. Nothing compels to find a iambic structure for line 5 as did [...] and differently Hansen in [...].