On Some Inscriptions of the Milesian Islands

Extract

The above text is published by G. Manganaro in his valuable and well-illustrated corpus of the inscriptions of the Milesian islands. The stone on which it is inscribed was dug up in a garden on the island of Lipsous (ancient Lepsia) in 1956 and studied by Manganaro on his visit there in 1962. The inscription, of late date, is cut at the foot of a grave stele, of whose sculptured relief surface the lesser portion survives with the lower part of a standing woman and seated man facing one another. The lettering is poor and shallow; and, to judge by the photograph in fig. 22, the text leaves a good deal of room for conjecture.

Manganaro's restoration is full of interest. In explanation he says: ‘The dead woman was buried by her father, who perhaps killed her, notwithstanding her many lamentations (συμβο(ά)-σασαν πολλά), in a ravine or valley into which he had thrown her. The reason? Her desertion of her husband Apollodorus, toward whom the lady must have cherished an aversion (ἐκ δυσμενυίας) At the age of forty, in the splendour of her youthful prime, she, the sacrificer (θύτρια), found her tomb (βωμόσ).’