Epitaph of a woman
created: Transcription from J.M. Reynolds' copy (CDL).
source date: Fourth or fifth 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/)

Not published before [...] 046, whence [...] 67.1500.

οἵα προσῆλθες ἀνδρὶ παρ [...] ἀπὸ παρθενείου δεῦρο λέχους [...] τοίαν σε τύμβος οὗτος ἔχει [...] καθαρὰν ἀπὸ π άντων και[...] ἐκ τῶν γυναικῶν νῦν ὀδυνῶν

[...] telle tu t'avanças près de ton époux [...], quittant ta couche virginale [...], telle cette tombe te retient [...], pure de tous les [...] et maintenant du fait des souffrances des femmes [...].

[...] such you proceeded beside your husband [...], coming from your virgin's couch [...], such this tomb keeps you, [...], clear of all [...] and now because of the womens' pains [...].

[...] quale incedevi accanto al tuo sposo [...], lasciando il tuo letto virginale [...], tale questa tomba ti racchiude, [...], pura da tutti i [...] e ora per le sofferenze delle donne [...].

We follow J.M. Reynolds for the suggested date.

The vestiges allow to understand that this is a funerary poem for a young woman deceased very soon after her marriage. Either she did not share or she will for ever escape the toils assigned to married and pregnant women, which is commonly described in verse epitaphs.

At line 1 the idea might be that coming from her father's home she settled with her husband.

At line 2 we restore λέχους on behalf of Eur. Tr. 676.

At line 4, instead of καί one should perhaps read either καιρῶν or κακῶν.

Metrical analysis: this fragmentary poem offers two types of meters: iambic catalectic trimeters are followed by dactylic segments that seem to be hemiepes (half pentameter). On this basis we calculated the lost parts at the end of verses, assuming that we had one line per verse. However this reconstruction is far from sure.