AIUK46 no. 37 Grave stele of the nurse Melitta

Grave stele of the nurse Melitta

AIUK 4.6 (BM, Funerary Monuments) no. 37 Date: ca. 330-320 BC

⟦Melitta⟧ daughter of Apollodoros, isoteles.

(relief) Melitta.

Nurse.

(5) Here the earth covers over the worthy (chrēstēn) nurse of Hippostrate; and now she longs for you. As long as you were alive I loved you, nurse, and now I still honour you, though you are below the earth, and I will honour you as long as I live. I know that even below the earth, if there is in fact a reward for the worthy ones, the first and foremost honours, (10) nurse, are yours, next to Persephone and Pluto. (trans. Tsagalis, adapted)^[1]

Previous - IG II² 7859 Next - IG II² 7934
Greek text

References:

AIUK 4.6 (BM, Funerary Monuments) no. 37 (Translated text) (AIUK) (AIO)

IG II² 7873 (PHI)

Conze I no. 130

GIBM IV 942

Peek, GVI, no. 747

CEG 2, no. 571

Clairmont, CAT 1.969

Scholl, Bildfeldstelen no. 442

Tsagalis, 18, 21, 27, 36, 100-108, 301-2 etc.

Translation by: Robert Pitt

AIO Images: 1 2 3 4

Monument type: Stele

Inscription type: Funerary, Metrical (dactylic hexameter)

Findspot: Athens (BM 1909,0221.1)

Transliterations on Places on

[1] This stele was once in the collection of Frederick North, 5th Earl of Guilford (see AIUK 4.6, no. 21) but was later discovered in a London builders’ yard, the owners of which donated it to the British Museum in 1909. The relief depicts a seated woman, Melitta, with a name label (b) to her right and the word "nurse" (c) beneath (titthē, literally a "wet-nurse", but the term was used for longer-term child carers). She faces a young girl, Hippostrate, who was once in her care, and who now, grown up, has composed the accompanying epigram (d) to honour her carer. Both figures hold out an object towards each other, perhaps birds or a doll in the case of the girl. Text (a), in larger letters above the relief, includes a careful erasure of the name Melitta, which was likely part of a reuse of the stele when a new name was painted in (there are no traces of reinscription). It is hard to see how this repurposing could have been successful, since the patronymic and other elements of the epigram remain untouched. When funerary monuments were reused it seems that many incongruities could be forgiven when the alternative was purchasing a new stone. The epigram unusually gives almost no information about the dead, neither a name (perhaps why it appears twice above), nor a listing of their virtues. We have instead a personal account of the importance of the nurse to her former charge, Hippostrate, who seems to have composed the poem herself.

We possess a good number of funerary monuments for nurses, who tend to be slaves and metics in Athens. Melitta was the daughter of a metic who had the privileged status of isoteles, paying taxes equal to citizens and exempt from the metic tax (metoikion). In l. 5 Melitta is described as "worthy" (chrēstē), a term used quite commonly in funerary inscriptions for those who performed "good service" in a subordinate role, though, as this case shows, they were not necessarily slaves. When isoteleis so designate themselves on tombstones, they omit their ethnics, their new status superseding any previous citizenship, showing how important such financial and social markers were for foreigners in Athens. For more detailed discussion of the inscription see AIUK 4.6 (BM, Funerary Monuments), no. 37.

Added: 6 Apr 2022
Updated: 18 Mar 2025
Feedback

ID: AIO_2205