Funerary invocation
created: Transcription from stone (CDL).
source date: Beginning of the 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/)

Mentioned in Italian translation by [...], p. 100; published [...] 051, whence [...] 67.1497 and [...] 2017.1658.

Cf. [...], pp. 16-17 (find); description and comments [...], pp. 71-72 and fig. 5; new thorough studies by [...] and [...], from which [...], 2023.554.

Τείμιέ μοι ❧ χαίροις ❧ καὶ ❧ εἰν Ἀΐδαο ❧ δόμοισιν.

Τείμιε[^a1].

[^a1: Τείμιε | τείμιε [(personal name)] [(adjective)]]

Timios, mon cher, puisses-tu être heureux même dans les demeures d'Hadès !

Timios, dear to me, might you be happy even in Hades' houses!

Timios, mio caro, stare bene pur nelle dimore dell'Ade!

[E. Fabbricotti's translation with slight changes]

This hexameter is a pastiche of Homer's Χαῖρέ μοι, ὦ Πάτροκλε, καὶ εἰν Ἀΐδαο δόμοισι at Il. XXIII.19 and 179.

Menozzi and others interpreted Τείμιε as a personal name. In [...] Dobias-Lalou was not quite convinced and opposed the following arguments: a personal name is not impossible, as Timius is attested as a cognomen in Rome. However, in that hypothesis, the name would have replaced the vocative Πάτροκλε without further change in the original formula. For that reason, she preferred to take it as a laudatory epithet. In this view, the invocation might be addressed to any person enclosed into the sarcophagus and the inscription, being part of the ornament, might have been prepared independently of the ordering person. This would have been especially convenient if the sarcophagus was not sculpted at Cyrene. She concluded then that the question should perhaps remain open.

[...] now adds a decisive fact: line 1 was not cut with the same tools as the other lines. If that line was added on the sarcophagus after it was purchased, the probability that the added element is a personal name seems much higher. Struffolino also recalls that Τίμιος is related to names already in use in Cyrenaica, such as Τιμοκλῆς and the feminine Τιμώι.

The change from imperative, which is usual in addresses to the dead, to optative is no commonplace, as the former mood is normally used in epitaphs for addressing the passer-by who will read the inscription.

[...] provide a detailed analysis of the iconography and its possible relations with the inscription.

Metrical analysis: a very regular dactylic hexameter. Leaves are cut at the penthemimer main caesura and at the light break inside the fifth foot.