AIUK46 no. 72 Columnar grave marker signed by the sculptor Aristion of Paros(?)

Columnar grave marker signed by the sculptor Aristion of Paros(?)

AIUK 4.6 (BM, Funerary Monuments) no. 72 Date: ca. 530 BC

[Aristion of Paro?]s made me. [- - thi]s is the monument of a brave and sound-minded man.^[1]

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Greek text

References:

AIUK 4.6 (BM, Funerary Monuments) no. 72 (Translated text) (AIUK) (AIO)

IG I³ 1269 (IG Online)

Peek, GVI, no. 54

CEG 1, no. 36

Translation by: Robert Pitt

AIO Images: 1 2

Monument type: Column

Inscription type: Funerary, Metrical (dactylic hexameter)

Fr. a - Findspot: Perhaps near the church of Ag. Nikolaos near Kantza (BM 2013,5017.24)
Fr. b - Findspot: By the ruined church of Ag. Andreas outside Kalyvia Kouvara (Athens Ephoria)

Transliterations on Places on

[1] Two fragments of this Archaic fluted Doric column have been discovered: the first (a), found by the ruined church of Agios Andreas outside Kalyvia Kouvara, is now in the British Museum; the second (b), containing the end of the text, was found near a church of Agios Nikolaos in Kantza. The inscription is carved along two flutes, giving an artist's signature and part of a verse text. The signature suggests that the column supported a sculpted element, such as a sphinx. Such columns are more familiar in Archaic Attica as dedications, particularly numerous from the Athenian Acropolis, but we have a small number of funerary examples as well as bases that likely held them. An Attic example for Antilochos, also signed by Aristion of Paros, is by the same cutter as our inscription (IG I³ 1208). Above graves they may have served a totemic function, standing in for the dead man, and their normal architectural function may have been appropriated to symbolise the strength of the individual. The phrase "this is the monument of a brave (or "good", agathos) and sound-minded (or "self-disciplined", sophron) man" is paralleled in IG I³ 1197 and also on the Antilochos monument. As these cases exemplify, Archaic Attic gravestones commonly speak of the dead as "brave and sound", something that we also find paralleled in literary epitaphs. For more detailed discussion of the inscription see AIUK 4.6 (BM, Funerary Monuments), no. 72.

Added: 6 Apr 2022
Updated: 18 Mar 2025
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