203-218

A Late Hellenistic grave-relief with an inscribed epigram at Serres : (Figs 1-2; Pis 91-92)

• Καραμπέρη, Μαριάννα

In the year 1981 a Late Hellenistic grave-relief was included in aprivate collection at Serres (provenance unknown). Carved on a piece of local marble, the relief, on the upper half of the stele, is of the "Hegeso type”, representing on the left a woman seated on a stool and two maids in front of her, the one kneeling down, helping her to put on her shoe and the other offering her a rectangular jewel box (scene from everyday-life or preparation for the grave? This poses a familiar problem of interpretation; E. Buschor suggested that such scenes had a double meaning: home and grave, present and past, life and death in an ideal union). On the right probably an altar and part of a tree with a snake around it —the usual motif of the "Thracian equestrian” type of relief. The upper part of the stele is missing (it should end in a pediment). On the lower half is inscribed an eleven-line (?) elegiac epigram, unconnected with the relief in terms of its quality. The epigrammatist, using formulas from Homer and the tragedy, offers us a moving epigram about Sopatra, a newly married sixteen year old girl, whom a terrible death carried irrevocably away during pregnancy, causing deep pain to her parents, Sostratos and Timo and to Nikostratos, her husband. The last part of the epigram, in which Sopatra, who is speaking and telling us about herself and the way she died addresses passers by perhaps calling on them to pity her or weep for her early and unjust death, is incomplete, because of the damage the stele has sustained.From the form of the letters which display the main changes that took place around 200 BC, the inscription should be dated in the second half of the 2nd century BC. While the relief is a work of mass production, the epigram is a literary piece of high quality.

• History and Archaeology

• Αρχαιολογία
• Excavations (Archaeology)
• Επιγραφές

Η αρθρογράφος ευχαριστεί την Έφορο X. Κουκούλη-Χρυσανθάκη για την άδεια δημοσίευσης του επιτύμβιου και ιδιαίτερα τους συνάδελφους Γ. Ξυλαπετσίδη για το έκτυπο του επιγράμματος και τη φωτογράφηση της στήλης, Ε. Κοτζαγιώργη για την αντιγραφή του επιγράμματος που παρεμβάλλεται στο κείμενο και Ε. Τοπούζη για τη δακτυλογράφηση του κειμένου. Για τη χρήσιμη συζήτηση πάνω στο επίγραμμα ευχαριστεί το Μανώλη Βουτυρά, λέκτορα Αρχαιολογίας στο Πανεπιστήμιο Θεσσαλονίκης., Περιέχει 2 σχέδια. Πίνακες 91-92 βλέπε τέλος τεύχους, Το άρθρο περιέχεται στο τεύχος: Μέρος Α'-Μελέτες