Epitaphs

An epitaph is a short phrase that honors a deceased person, usually inscribed on a tombstone. The English word epitaph is derived from the Greek epitaphios, which translates literally as on or at (epi) the grave (taphos). In its verbal form, the word refers to the performance of rituals at a grave and the meaning developed to refer to the text inscribed on a grave marker. Epitaphs that indicate the name of the deceased have their origin in ancient Greece and Rome, but epitaphs that express aphorisms also have an ancient and modern literary tradition.

In ancient Greece, an upright stone slab (stele) marked the location of a burial and an inscription on it communicated the identification of the deceased. These two rituals of commemoration were not always combined: With the development of writing, the custom of identifying the deceased originated in Egypt and among the MinoanMycenaean civilizations, even though the location of a burial had also been communicated earlier, whether through a tumulus mound, a monument, or a pile of stones, in other regions of Europe, Africa, and Asia. Greek steles and columnar markers (kioniskoi or columellae) could be simple, containing only the name of the deceased, or could be more elaborate, like those in Attica, that were often decorated with sculpture and contained epitaphs that could, in addition to recording the name of the deceased, include aphorisms addressed to passersby on the brevity of life and the inevitability of death. Perhaps the most famous Greek epitaph is the one composed by Simonides of Cos that records the burial location of the fallen Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C.E.: “Stranger, tell the Spartans that we who lie here obeyed their orders.”

The epitaph is emulated on the Kohima epitaph (attr. John Maxwell Edmonds) that frequently appears on veteran memorials: “When you go home, tell them of us and say, /for their tomorrow, we gave our today.” Other epitaphs associated with famous battles and military service include variations on this sentiment, such as the epitaph that commemorates the British dead at the Battle of Concord, Massachusetts (April 19, 1775): “They came three thousand miles and died /To keep the past upon its throne; /Unheard, beyond the ocean tide /Their English mother made her moan” and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., designed by Maya Ying Lin, which records the names of fallen soldiers in chronological order of date of death. The absence of names on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery adds to the pathos of a monument that celebrates the military service of those denied an individual burial or commemoration.

Latin epitaphs were inscribed on funerary monuments, simple markers (cippi), or even painted on small marble plaques (tituli). The first known epitaph in Latin is that of L. Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, consul in 298 B.C.E., which was inscribed on his sarcophagus and is now displayed in the [Page 414]Vatican Museums. Verse epitaphs developed concurrently with elegiac poetry in the late 2nd century B.C.E., and both share the elegiac meter (elegiac couplet of alternating hexameter and pentameter verse). The earliest verse epitaph commemorates Cn. Cornelius Scipio Hispanus (consul in 135 B.C.E.), a descendant of Scipio Barbatus. Elegists such as Propertius, Tibullus, and Ovid, writing in the Augustan period, include epitaphs within the texts of their elegies. The tradition was revived by the Christian poet Ausonius in the 4th century C.E. in his verse epitaphs of mythological figures and his Parentalia, a collection of epitaph poems, named after the pagan festival honoring the dead, addressed to his dead relatives.

...