Epitaph of Myrtilos
created: Transcription from previous editors.
source date: Perhaps second or 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/)

[...], p. 40, pl. XIV, whence [...], 46.2222; [...], pp. 109-114, whence [...], 50.1651; [...] 015. Cf. [...], pp. 479-480.

Μουσάων θεράποντα καὶ Ἡρακλῆος ἑταῖρον
Μυρτίλον ἥδ' εὐνὴ λαϊνέη κατέχει

ᾦ κανόνες τε πόδες τε διηνεκέως ἐμέλησαν
πενταέθλων μελέτης γράμματι κηδομένῳ

γράμματι κηδομένῳ[^a1]

[^a1: γράμματι κηδομένῳ | γραμματικῆς θ' ἅμ' ἔην | γραμματικῆς τε γὰρ ἦν]

Serviteur des Muses et compagnon d'Héraclès,

tel était Myrtilos qui repose dans cette tombe de pierre.

Il n'a pas cessé de donner tous ses soins aux règles et aux pieds

en consacrant un poème à la pratique du pentathle.

[trad. Fr. Chamoux]

Servant of the Muses and companion of Heracles,

Myrtilos is constrained by this bed of stone.

The rules and feet were his constant care

and he produced a poem about the pentathlon practice (J.M. Reynolds' translation with some changes).

Servitore delle Muse e compagno di Eracle,

Myrtilos questo letto di pietra trattiene.

A lui ininterrottamente stettero a cuore i metri e i piedi:

dedicò un poema alla pratica del pentathlon.

Reynolds suspected that Myrtilos' tomb stood inside the Gymnasium, which would explain that the stone was reused in the nearby Byzantine 'fortress', more easily than if it was brought from one of the necropoles outside the city walls.

In Chamoux' view, the γράμμα was a didactical poem about the pentathlon; of course Myrtilos would also have composed his own epitaph.

Metrical analysis: two elegiac couplets.