Μόρος γυναικών στα αρχαία ελληνικά επιγράμματα

Abstract

This thesis deals with the relationship of women and death in the ancient Greek world. It is based mainly on eight hundred and sixty Greek tombstone epigrams, which commemorate women. The epigrams studied have been derived from W. Peek’s Griechische Vers-inschriften (1955) and Griechische Grabgedichte (1962), R. Merkelbach’s and B. Stauber’s Steinepigramme aus dem griechischen Osten (1998-2005) and the annual editions of Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum (1962-). Although the epigrams collected cover an extensive chronological period (6th cent B.C –6th cent. A.D.) and a wide geographical area, the majority concern the regions of the Greek Mainland and Asia Minor in Roman times. Apart from epigrams, ancient medical treatises along with literary and archeological evidence have been studied. The issue of women’s death has been addressed in its demographic, social and cultural context. Essential demographic parameters and social aspects have been examined, such as: the age at death and the cause of death, virgins’ untimely death, death on childbed, longevity and its representation as “a nice death”, the role of women in funerary rituals and their involvement in the construction of gender identities through it, the relationship of dedicators and the deceased, the social views on the roles of sexes and the beliefs about death. The study of the themes above, reveals that in tombstone epigrams women’s death – at least that of the prosperous and respectable ladies usually recorded- is represented as a loss that threatens the continuity of the “oikos” and the city, in particular in the case of a sudden and untimely death which frustrates aspirations and expectations, such as death at delivery or death at puberty. Generally speaking, in epigrams women are steadily attached to nature, necessity and sacredness and they are indentified with their social and biological destiny, as it was traditionally considered, that is with their reproductive role. Their representations in funerary poetry reflect the way ancient Greek culture has given meaning and worth to these functions and activities and indicate differentiations as far as social and private priorities and sensibilities are concerned. Undoubtedly, marriage and family have been always the background of epigrams dedicated to women, but they have not been considered in the same way over time. From the Hellenistic period onwards marriage has been reevaluated and redefined, as it moved out of the restricted private domain to the public one and it obtained public meaning. Specifically, during the Imperial times funerary epigrams reveal, on the one hand, a particular new attachment of parents to their little daughters and, on the other hand, a positive reevaluation of the conjugal relationship, which has become more personal, more intimate and richer in sentiments. In other words, funerary epigrams reveal the improvement of women’s social status during that period, improvement that has been the result of individual’s turn to new fields of self-determination and…