Hidden Presences: Monuments, Gravesites, and Corpses in Greek Funerary EpigramHidden Presences explores the inheritances of Hellenistic literary epigram from the sepulchral sub-genre of inscribed epigram. Divorced from the stone and the burial site, the literary form enjoys a new freedom, but exhibits this independence in a deliberate but creative use of out-of-date themes (notably roadside placement of the monument), subversive use of the inscribed epigrams' attempt to betray the "hidden presence" of the deceased, and exploitation of sepulchral conceits surrounding cenotaph. Indeed, this study shows not only that the fourth- and third-century poets at the headwaters of the literary tradition were interested in inscriptional precedents, but also that this interest was exercised down to the time of the epigrammatist Meleager. The poets within the variative community of literary epigram therefore carry on a literary conversation not simply between themselves, but between themselves and the inscribed tradition, and among themselves about the inscribed tradition. |
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Alcaeus Antipater of Sidon archaic period Asclepiades Attic burial buried Callaeschrus Callimachus cenotaph century B.C. circa concealment convention couplet Damagetus dead death at sea deceased Dioscorides Diphilus distich earth elegiac epigrammatic epigrammatists epitaph Euippus fictive fourth century Friedländer and Hoffleit funerary epigram grave epigram Greek Gutzwiller 1998 GV-I Hades Hansen Hegesippus Hellenistic epigrams Hellenistic literary Hellenistic period Heraclitus hexameter hidden presence Homeric Humphreys 1993 Iliad inscribed epigrams inscription lament Leonidas 62 Leonidas of Tarentum Leontichus literary epigram living Lycus marker Meleager Meleagrian memory monument motif obscuring surface Odyssey oñua passerby Peek Perses poem poem's poets Posidippus present Promachus reader realm revealed rhetoric roadside placement sepulchral epigram shipwreck Sourvinou-Inwood 1995 stele stone Teleutagoras Tharsys theme Theocritus Theodoridas Theris third century Timolytus tion tomb tradition tumulus voice washed ashore γὰρ δὲ ἐν ἐπ ἐπὶ καὶ μὲν σᾶμα σῆμα τε τὸ τόδε τὸν