Death of a Child

Chapter 9 explores the interrelationship between literary and inscriptional epigram, principally through a study of GV 1159 = SGO 03/05/04, a poem from imperial Notion on a young boy who drowned in a well. The analysis pays particular attention to versification, narrative technique, the characterization of the boy’s speaking voice and language, and explores the poem’s use of AP 7.170 (attributed to Posidippus or Callimachus) as a way of enfolding the drowned boy within literary tradition. Attention is also paid to the debt of the epitaphic tradition both to Homer and to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. The analysis sheds light on what important features at stake in the attempt to distinguish between ‘literary’ and ‘non-literary’ epigram.