Troels Myrup Kristensen has posted a photograph of the sarcophagus, found at Termessos in 1998 and now in the Antalya museum. The verse inscription on it, which he reports to be barely readable to the naked eye, has been published as:
- SGO 4 18/01/28 = R. Merkelbach and J. Stauber, Steinepigramme aus dem griechischen Osten, 5 vols., Stuttgart, 1998-2004 (OCLC: 40719443), vol. 4, no. 18/01/28.
- I have not been able to identify any version of the original text online as yet.
Troels offers an English translation, modified from the one on display in the museum:
(This grave) keeps inside the one that death took suddenly. This is the grave of Dog Stephanos that went away and vanished. Rhodope cried for it and buried it like a human. I, (the) Dog Stephanos: Rhodope set up my grave.
Julia Lougovaya (one of our co-editors here at CE), highlights this inscription in her review of SGO 4 (BMCR 2005.07.31), offering the following translation of the readable portion of the text (the final 2 of 3 original epigrams):
This is the tomb of the dog, Stephanos, who perished,
Whom Rhodope shed tears for and buried like a human (vv. 4-5).
I am the dog Stephanos, and Rhodope set up a tomb for me (v. 6).
Julia notes that Rhodope’s own sarcophagus, which carries a prose epitaph in which she takes sole credit for the construction of the tomb (Αὐρ(ηλία) Ῥοδόπη τὴν σωματοθήκην ἑαυτῆ μόνη), was found nearby. This inscription is published as:
- TAM 3.746 = Rudolf Heberdey (ed.), Tituli Pisidiae linguis Graeca et Latina conscripti. Tituli Termessi et agri Termessensis, Tituli Asiae Minoris III (OCLC for series: 2668404), Vienna, 1941, no. 746.
- PHI 280851 = Searchable Greek Inscriptions: A Scholarly Tool in Progress, The Packard Humanities Institute (full Greek text after TAM 3.746)
Andrej Petrovic and Brian Turner contributed to the content of this article.
The editors of CE would be grateful for additional information about these inscriptions: texts, translations, photographs, publication information and the like.
Hello all,
the epigram (the full text comprises six verses) has been published in SGO 18/01/28.
Andrej
Many thanks for these refs. I was not aware that the inscription had been published. It is very faint and barely visible by the naked eye.
Cheers,
Troels
Troels: thank you for the original post of the photograph. I had not been aware of this interesting inscribed object until I saw your post.
Andrej: Thanks for the ref!
Brian: you too!
Best,
Tom