Funerary verse-inscription for Phileso
created: Transcription from first editor and photographs (CDL).
source date: Second half of first century BC or first 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/)

New in [...].

[...], pp. 202-203, whence [...], 64.2023; [...] (ph.); [...]; [...] 2019.557.

Νεκρὸς ἠμὶ κόπρος
κόπρος δὲ γῆ· Γῆ δ' ἐστὶ θεός·
εἴ τι θεόν Γῆ, καὶ
θεὸς δ' ἐστὶ νεκρός.

χαῖρε Φιλησὼ Ἰλαρίωνος ἐτῶν ζ [...]

δὲ γῆ. Γῆ[^a1] εἴ[^a2] Χαῖρε[^a3]

[^a1: δὲ γῆ. Γῆ | δὲ γῆ. Γῆ | δ' ἔβη γῆν [from photograph]]

[^a2: εἴ | ἤ]

[^a3: Χαῖρε | ὑγίαινε [or]]

Moi, le cadavre, je suis poussière. Mais poussière est la terre. Mais la terre est déesse. Si la Terre est quelque chose de divin, alors un cadavre est divin aussi.

Adieu Philesô, fille d'Hilarion, âgée de sept ans.

I, a corpse, am dirt. But dirt is earth. But earth is god. If Earth is something divine, then a corpse is god too. (transl. F. Favi).

Farewell Phileso, daughter of Ilarion, aged seven.

Io, un cadavere, sono sudiciume. Ma sudiciume è la terra. E la Terra è dio. Se la Terra è qualcosa di divino, allora anche un cadavere è divino.

Addio Philesò, figlia di Ilarion, di sette anni.

The epitaph for Phileso, Ilarions’ daughter, reproduces a quotation of a well-known epigram presented as a syllogism by Pseudo-Epicharmus (fr. 297 K.-A. εἰμὶ νεκρός· | νεκρὸς δὲ κόπρος, γῆ δ’ ἡ κόπρος ἐστίν· | εἰ δὴ γῆ θεός ἐστ’, οὐ νεκρός, ἀλλὰ θεός). The same text is attested in four other inscriptions (GV 1126 from Eretria, 3rd/2nd century BC; GV 1941 from Thisbe 2nd/3rd century AD; CIL VI 29609 from Rome, 1st century AD; CIL VI 35887 from Rome 2nd/3rd century AD). According to [...], p. 86, the inscription from Cyrene adheres most closely to the literary model, since the crudity of κόπρος is preferred to κόνις/cinis, present in the other epigraphic parallels. Favi persuasively improved the text: he intended νεκρός as a substantive referred to Phileso and emended the otherwise too poetic construction βαίνω with accusative of the l. 2, restoring the correct order of the third sentence with δέ in second position. At l. 4 he restored the syllogism by interpreting ἠ as a conditional particle, instead of a disjunctive conjunction, suggesting that ἤ might be a dialectal form of εἰ. Dobias-Lalou ([...] 2019.557 thinks that it is more simply due to hypercorrection.

At line 5, the surviving ε is the end of an imperative: χαῖρε fits better the space available than ὑγίαινε, although the latter is very frequent in this tomb and in other ones.

The name Phileso is attested in Egypt (I.Syringes 641; SEG 2.855), whereas the name Ilarion has occurrences only in Central and Northern Greece, Asia Minor, and Italy.

In view of the lettering, the suggested date (late Hellenismus) should be lowered, according to Dobias-Lalou.

Metrical commentary: the rythm should be based upon iambic dipodies, like in the original. However, there are many irregularities, which forbid to draw a regular schema. The cutting out proposed above is very tentative.