Epitaph of Dionysis
created: Transcription from stone (CDL).
source date: Perhaps third century AD
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/)

[...], n. 35 and fig. 25, also p. 504; [...], n. 1102; [...] 013. Cf. [...], pp. 11-13 (area of discovery); [...], pp. 327-328, whence [...], 64.2009.

Οὔνομα μὲν Διονύσις ἔφυ δὲ πατρὶς Κυράνα

καὶ παῖδας γενόμαν καὶ παίδων παῖδας ἐσεῖδον
καὶ βιοτᾶς λαχόμαν πλὴν δύ' ἐτῶν ἑκατόν·

θνήσκω δ' οὐ νούσοισι δαμεὶς, εὕδων δ' ἐνὶ κοίτῃ·
τοῦτον ἔχω μισθὸν λύσθιον εὐσεβίης.

λύσθιον[^a1]

[^a1: λύσθιον | δύσθιον | λύσθιον]

Dionysis est mon nom et Cyrène, ma patrie ;

j'ai engendré des fils et connu les fils de mes fils

et le sort m'a donné une vie où deux ans manquaient pour faire cent.

Je meurs non parce que la maladie m'a dompté, mais en plein sommeil dans mon lit;

je trouve là l'ultime contrepartie de ma piété.

[trad. C. Dobias-Lalou at [...], légèrement modifiée]

My name is Dionysis, my homeland Cyrene;

I fathered sons and saw the sons of my sons;

the fate granted me with a life of hundred years but two.

I do not die subdued by any illness, but while sleeping in my bed,

getting thus the last reward of my piety.

Il mio nome è Dionysis, la mia patria Cirene;

ho generato figli e visto i figli dei miei figli;

la sorte mi ha concesso una vita di cento anni meno due.

Muoio non vittima di una malattia, ma mentre dormo nel mio letto.

Questo è il premio ultimo per la mia pietà.

At line 1, the personal name Διονύσιος has its ending reduced to -ις, a fact which is well attested from first century AD onwards.

At line 3, παῖδες is plausibly a mistake. However some confusions do happen elsewhere between nominative and accusative plural.

At line 3, γενόμαν is used for the transitive verb ἐγεινάμην, a choice that might be explained by the metrical requirement; as for Peek, he suggests that the intended verb was τεκόμαν.

At lines 9-10, λύσθιον has υ for οι, a well attested change for the Imperial period.

Metrical analysis: one dactylic hexameter and two elegiac couplets.