The Most Embarrassing Tombstone of All Time

July 14, 2023 11:46 AM

Greek and Roman epitaphs can be touching. They can also, in the case of Allia Potestas, even be risqué. But they can also be horribly, incredibly embarrassing-- as in the case of Aphrodisios of Alexandria Troas, as seen in this short by the great Stefan Milo. This tombstone at the Louvre, recently translated into English by Chaniotis and posted on Twitter by Roko Rumora, has to be seen to be believed.

For those without a Twitter account, the translation reads thus:

Passer-by, Aphrodisios is my name; I'm a citizen of Alexandria Troas and a leader of the chorus. I die a most pathetic death because of my wife, the dirty adulteress (whom Zeus will destroy). Her secret lover Lychon—a member of my own family!—slaughtered me, still in my youth. He threw me from the heights like a discus. I was twenty years old, so full of beauty, when the Moirai spun my fate and sent me as a delight to Hades.

LL 127 ; N 18 ; Ma 2867

posted by suburbanbeatnik (59 comments total)

I doubt the wife paid for the headstone. He couldn't have pre-known his own fate, so he didn't buy it. I wonder who paid for it. Fascinating.
posted by hippybear at 11:51 AM on July 14, 2023 [6 favorites]

Hippybear, I'm guessing it was his parents. He was only 20 when he was murdered, so there's a good chance they were still alive.
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 11:52 AM on July 14, 2023 [13 favorites]

nice find.

"Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Hispanus, son of Gnaeus, praetor, curule aedile, quaestor, tribune of soldiers (twice); member of the Board of Ten for Judging Law-suits; member of the Board of Ten for Making Sacrifices."
posted by clavdivs at 12:08 PM on July 14, 2023

"He threw me from the heights like a discus".
posted by mhoye at 12:09 PM on July 14, 2023 [19 favorites]

I'd pay a dollar to see that.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:13 PM on July 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

The "like a discus" is absolutely magnificent. Dude died being yeeted in the manner of a frisbee and we are still talking about it to this day. Immortal, fabulous
posted by potrzebie at 12:16 PM on July 14, 2023 [54 favorites]

Oh that Allia Potestas is also very poignant though. The bit about her two lovers separating after her death is so moving.
posted by Adridne at 12:27 PM on July 14, 2023 [8 favorites]

Like playing helicopter with a pre-schooler only he's 20 and you're standing on top of a building and your grip slips.
posted by hippybear at 12:27 PM on July 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

I’m guessing it was his parents.

Mother, probably, and the lack of specificity of "a member of my own family!" suggests that whoever it was was still around and in a position to retaliate for a direct naming — father, older brother, or cousin would be my guesses, and in that order of probability.
posted by jamjam at 12:28 PM on July 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

The alleged perpetrator is named, it's Lychon (whoever that may be). I'm just trying to imagine how somebody gets thrown like a discus. They must have been tied up?
posted by coolname at 12:43 PM on July 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

Twitter (which Zeus will destroy) lets non-logged-in users see individual tweets but not threads anymore, so thanks for including the text in the [more inside].
posted by echo target at 12:51 PM on July 14, 2023 [53 favorites]

grab an arm grab a leg and twirl.
posted by clavdivs at 12:53 PM on July 14, 2023 [3 favorites]

So there is an entire Greek poetry subgenre of literary epitaph, but I see this one was actually inscribed on a stone, so probably reflecting a real person's death.
posted by praemunire at 1:05 PM on July 14, 2023

This is interesting to me, considering how difficult life was for married women in an ancient Greek setting. Granted, this isn't fifth century BC Athens, but whatever else you can say for her, she had a lot of nerve, and so did her lover.
posted by Countess Elena at 1:13 PM on July 14, 2023

The New Oxford Book of Light Verse includes this headstone inscription from a graveyard in Peterborough, England:

Reader, pass on, nor idly waste your time
In bad biography, or bitter rhyme;
For what I am, this cumbrous clay ensures,
And what I was is no affair of yours.
posted by Paul Slade at 1:13 PM on July 14, 2023 [23 favorites]

For more odd graves, check out this fine blog post (with photos) about The Merry Cemetery in Săpânţa, Romania by MeFi's own zaelic.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:20 PM on July 14, 2023 [6 favorites]

(whom Zeus will destroy)

I vow to start using this often - as echo target (whom Zeus will esteem) has done above - to describe people and things that displease me.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:51 PM on July 14, 2023 [20 favorites]

Should have started with "I vow, upon destruction by Zeus, to start using this often"
posted by hippybear at 1:54 PM on July 14, 2023 [5 favorites]

Look at his little image in the Louvre link! He’s all plump cheeked and stocky, and I imagine him like a little South Park cartoon being yeeted off a cliff.
posted by Hypatia at 2:07 PM on July 14, 2023 [5 favorites]

Should have started with "I vow, upon destruction by Zeus, to start using this often"

That assumes I would vow that.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:12 PM on July 14, 2023

Thrown like a frisbee, according to the tombstone itself.
posted by hippybear at 2:13 PM on July 14, 2023

There is this delightful epitaph of John Laird McCaffery in Montreal's Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery. The story is that is ex-wife and mistress ordered the stone on his passing.
posted by ecco at 2:37 PM on July 14, 2023 [5 favorites]

you THROW aphrodisios? you throw his body from the heights like a discus? oh! oh! jail for wife! jail for wife for One Thousand Years!!!!
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 2:53 PM on July 14, 2023 [31 favorites]

In case you were wondering, as I was, how the tombstone got to the Louvre, the answer is that it was 'collected' (i.e. looted) by the wonderfully named Marie-Gabriel-Florent-Auguste de Choiseul-Gouffier, French ambassador to Constantinople.

Choiseul-Gouffier tried to 'collect' the Parthenon sculptures as well, and if the Napoleonic Wars had ended differently we might now be debating whether the Choiseul-Gouffier Marbles should be returned from the Louvre to Athens.
posted by verstegan at 3:15 PM on July 14, 2023 [5 favorites]

like a discus
getting flung for the very first time
like a di-i-i-i-scus
got adult'ry on my mind
posted by cortex at 3:58 PM on July 14, 2023 [18 favorites]

like a discus *hey!*

Can't leave out the hey.
posted by hippybear at 4:06 PM on July 14, 2023 [12 favorites]

That sucks. My cat died yesterday and I'm thinking about how I could have prevented it if I'd only known and if I had a job that didn't absorb so much of my time. I don't find the epitaph funny. His parents should have hired a better writer.
posted by Didnt_do_enough at 4:44 PM on July 14, 2023 [4 favorites]

Didnt_do_enough: I'm so sorry about your cat. I beg you not to do that to yourself but instead find the memory of the time with your cat to be a blessing. Pets provide us with so much companionship and joy and it's wonderful you had one with you for however long. Virtual hugs if you need one.
posted by hippybear at 4:56 PM on July 14, 2023 [8 favorites]

A more recent (although still technically ancient) gravestone that's surely at least as embarrassing.
posted by Slogby at 5:01 PM on July 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

It might just be from the way the translation is written but it sounds like Lychon definitely paid for the tombstone.

It's basically a stone tablet saying, "I, Lychon, killed this little bitch and took his woman (who I'm also related to*) because I am all that is man."

Aphrodisios was probably a lovely person, Lychon sounds like an asshole.

*Weird flex bro (I look forward to a Roman history expert coming in to explain why this was totes normal at the time).
posted by VTX at 5:24 PM on July 14, 2023

I find it notable we don't have the wife's name in the inscription. We know the cuckold's name, Aphrodisios, and the name of the wife's lover, the murderer Lychon. No name for the wife, just that she's a "dirty adultress" and that someone hopes she'll be destroyed by the gods. I suspect that isn't particularly unusual for an epitaph and says something about the typical role of women in the Greek society?

Contrast the post's linked Roman epitaph for Allia Potestas, which is quite sweet in some of the ways it praises her. And awful in others: "never thought of herself as a free woman". I do like the mention that "she so guided her two young lovers" although judging from the notes on the linked page it's not clear what to make of her status and the tone of the epitaph.
posted by Nelson at 5:46 PM on July 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

I have a feeling Lychon made the same "I want the world to remember me!" wish that Ea-Nasir did.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 5:49 PM on July 14, 2023

No name for the wife, just that she's a "dirty adultress" and that someone hopes she'll be destroyed by the gods.

Typical mother-in-law, hey?

*Catskills rimshot*
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:57 PM on July 14, 2023 [4 favorites]

you THROW aphrodisios? you throw his body like discus? oh! oh! hades for lychon! hades for lychon for One Thousand Years!!!!!
posted by lazugod at 6:49 PM on July 14, 2023 [13 favorites]

The Frogs say "krikikikik krikikikik".
posted by hippybear at 7:00 PM on July 14, 2023

so there’s a version of the ancient greek afterlife, right, where people slowly fade as they’re forgotten by the living, eventually getting worn down to an indistinct blob, or to one or two features that reflect what by chance remains of them — a blacksmith had a hammer with his name on it survive to the present day, so instead of just being totally indistinct he’s mostly indistinct, but dressed as a blacksmith and carrying that hammer. and like we all know ea-nasir, right, so ea-nasir in the afterlife isn’t a vague blob of no features, he’s there with his shitty copper and his collection of hate mail that he reads and rereads with joy a forever-fixed grin reflecting his knowledge that he’s gotten away with it

anyway. so this dude here from that tombstone, if you want a picture of his afterlife picture a cuckold spinning like a discus, forever.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:47 PM on July 14, 2023 [14 favorites]

I suspect that isn't particularly unusual for an epitaph and says something about the typical role of women in the Greek society?

This is not unusual. As Pericles (supposedly) said, the greatest glory for a woman is to be least talked about, and in public, particularly in oratory, (respectable, living) women's names were politely not to be mentioned; they were instead referred to by their relations with men, so-and-so's daughter or wife or sister. You do get women's names in epitaphs as a genre, but NOT using it would not be surprising it at all.

In case anyone else (besides me) wanted to see the Greek, this is the text (reproduced from Chaniotis 2012 p. 104f.):

[ἔστ]ιν τούνοµά µοι Ἀφροδείσιος, ὦ παροδεῖτα·
   [ε]ἰµὶ δ᾿Ἀλεξανδρεύς, τῶν δὲ χορ⟨ῶν⟩ ὁ µέσος·
[θν]ήσκω δ᾿οἰκτροτάτῳ θανάτῳ διὰ τὴν ἄλοχόν µου,
   [κ]λεψίγαµον µιεράν, ἣν περὶ Ζεὺς ὀλέσει·
ταύτη⟨ς⟩ γὰρ λάθριος γαµέτης κἀµὸν γένος, Λύχων,   5
   σφάξ[ε] µε, κἀφ᾿ ὕψους δισκοβόλησεν νέον·
δισδέκατον γὰρ ἔτος κατέχοντά µε, κάλλος ἔχοντα,
   κλώσασαι µοῖραι πέµψαν ἄγαλµ᾿ Ἀΐδῃ.

In case it isn't clear from the formatting, it's a metrical (verse) inscription (as was common). Between this and the carving of the figure in the aedicula, this is an expensive monument that the survivors have commissioned, and no, not particularly funny (?); instead it has many pathetic (> 'pathos') features. It falls under the category of revenge epitaphs and emphasizes the harm that has been done to the community (note the insistence on the young man's citizenship in the second line, and the role of the [otherwise conventional] passerby in the 1st in learning of this tragedy) by this act of kin-slaying.

For what it's worth, the interpretation that Lychon (Λύχων, line 5) is the name of the adulterer is Chaniotis' own; it is not a known Greek word or name. Earlier editors suggested other readings (including the loss of perhaps two lines here). I think there is definitely a textual problem in this part of the poem: the use of γένος is difficult (and unparalleled to mean 'kinsman'?) and γαμέτης means the opposite of 'lover' (it means 'spouse').

The verb that Chaniotis translates as 'he threw me ... like a discus', δισκοβόλησεν, is extremely rare and otherwise used only literally (it means 'to throw a discus'), which makes me wonder whether what is described is not that Lychon (?) threw Aphrodeisios off a cliff (vel sim.) but that he metaphorically cast Aphrodeisios down from the heights of happiness (ὕψος can be metaphorical) by destroying his marriage? Otherwise, I would expect many more curses heaped upon this kinslaying adulterer, personally.

At any rate, it's a fascinating inscription!
posted by lysimache at 7:54 PM on July 14, 2023 [43 favorites]

what's up with the peg.
posted by clavdivs at 7:55 PM on July 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

but that he metaphorically cast Aphrodeisios down from the heights of happiness

So it's the gravestone for a 20 year old's happiness, but he lived on after this?

Surely this is an actual grave marker and isn't meant to be interpreted poetically.
posted by hippybear at 8:02 PM on July 14, 2023

Not embarrassing. Describing it that way says something about Stefan Milo.
posted by amtho at 8:02 PM on July 14, 2023 [3 favorites]

I guess, I ask in contrast, how many OTHER grave markers found from Ancient Greece are somehow conjured to be poetic interpretations of a non-death being memorialized and not actually just tombstones?
posted by hippybear at 8:03 PM on July 14, 2023

Surely this is an actual grave marker and isn't meant to be interpreted poetically

Oh, no, definitely an actual epitaph; I'm just wondering, given the textual problems in that part of the poem (including the word that means 'he slayed') whether, in fact, dude was not murdered (via discus-throwing!!) by anyone but simply died.
posted by lysimache at 8:04 PM on July 14, 2023 [2 favorites]

I do like to think he was picked up by an arm and a leg and swung around and hurled off of a height because that is what the text suggests and also is a thing I picture asshole men doing to smaller men who confront them in an age when killing other people wasn't as big of a deal.

I do prefer this generally not to happen to people living in any age, truly.
posted by hippybear at 8:08 PM on July 14, 2023

So it’s okay to find humor in the murder of rich people if it was sufficiently long ago, and they were done wrong rather than done in by their own hubris?

I’m so confused.
posted by eviemath at 8:16 PM on July 14, 2023 [5 favorites]

No, it's okay to think a description of a death is literal from long ago. That's all.
posted by hippybear at 8:23 PM on July 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

Can’t say as I would ever describe myself as “liking” to picture a murder in such detail, especially not one that overlaps with the typical style of cruel pranks pulled by bullies since time immemorial. Given the post was phrased as if the story on the tombstone should somehow be embarrassing to the murdered dude, it certain comes across as laughing at his death.
posted by eviemath at 8:32 PM on July 14, 2023

Comedy is Tragedy plus Time.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:06 PM on July 14, 2023 [17 favorites]

κλεψίγαµον is also an uncommon word, popping only one usage in the LSJ.

Perhaps he died of heartbreak upon learning of his wife's infidelity, or took his own life.
posted by praemunire at 9:13 PM on July 14, 2023 [4 favorites]

Or maybe there’s some cultural context we’re missing that changes the significance of the simile, gives it a layer of meaning we don’t have access to.

A quick google search gives us this: “ Unlike other sports, the discus did not begin as a military exercise nor as an agricultural activity. The first descriptions of this athletic event are found in Homer's Iliad, in the funerary games that were organized by Achilles in honor of Patroclus. In that event, Polypoites was pronounced winner and was given as a prize the solo, the unprocessed iron mass he used in the competition. In the Odyssey, during the games of the Phaeaceans in honor of Odysseus, the hero from Ithaca won the discus competition. In Greek mythology, discus throwing was associated with various unintentional deaths, as for example the death of Hyacinthus who was accidentally killed by his friend Apollo when the blow of Zephyrus threw the god's discus off course. (via: http://www.fhw.gr/olympics/ancient/en/205d.html)

But I’m just a Googler. Maybe a scholar of Ancient Greece will come along and share some insight.
posted by notyou at 10:15 PM on July 14, 2023

I don't know what the laws of Alexandria Troas were, but it's worth noting that, in classical Athens, you were in fact permitted to kill a man you found actually in bed with either your wife or certain other female dependents/relatives. (See Todd's commentary on Lysias, v. 1, p. 44.) So it's possible that Aphrodisios died, by flinging into the beyond or otherwise, during an attempt to kill "Lychon," rather than through premeditated murder.

Λύχων could maybe be a participle, I think, but of an unattested verb. I also don't know what changes the meaning of σφάζω might have undergone at this time, but it's most commonly used in Homeric and Attic Greek to refer to slaughter by throat-cutting, ritual or otherwise. If I'm parsing the verse right, it says that "he slaughtered me, and threw me from the heights like a discus," doesn't it? Not by throwing, or even with a participle to leave the exact relationship of the two actions potentially ambiguous. So Aphrodisios might have been killed otherwise, and the body disposed of to cover up the crime by casting it into the sea. (This possibly conflicts with the other interpretation I suggested above, of course.)
posted by praemunire at 11:25 PM on July 14, 2023 [5 favorites]

notyou: Maybe a scholar of Ancient Greece Movies will come along and share some insight . . .
Hylas and Hercules give lessons in discus.
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:31 PM on July 14, 2023

Thrown like a frisbee, according to the tombstone itself.

But straight on or underhand wrist flick? Or hammer?
posted by chavenet at 12:43 AM on July 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

grab an arm grab a leg and twirl.

That would be getting thrown like a hammer toss. He was thrown like a discus - grab him in a single hand, underhand, and throw from there. One hand only - discus, not hammer.
posted by Dysk at 1:15 AM on July 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

But straight on or underhand wrist flick? Or hammer?

Clues from the images
posted by BWA at 4:29 AM on July 15, 2023

considering how difficult life was for married women in an ancient Greek setting

Yeah, women get unjustifiably accused of the murder of a deceased husband A LOT in societies based on male supremacy
posted by glasseyes at 4:48 AM on July 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

Another thing to keep in mind is that the wife would have almost certainly been a teenager. Maybe 15, 16, 17? The most acceptable age for men to get married in ancient Greece was 30, but marrying at younger ages, as my Greek friend M. assures me, wasn't out of the common way. However, women would have been married off in their mid teens, 14-16. If Aphrodisios was 20, "adulteress" in question would have probably been a few years younger.

M. also thinks, from reading the inscription, that Aphrodisios was murdered; and she thinks, @praemunire, that your interpretation is the most likely one (that he was "slaughtered" from some fight with the lover and then thrown into the sea). She also thinks "Lychon" is the name of the lover, and that the inscription makes it clear. She doesn't think it's that odd for an unattested name to show up in the record, and she thinks it likely that Lychon was older.

For the record, here's a paper written by the translator, Angelos Chaniotis, discussing this tombstone.
posted by suburbanbeatnik at 5:04 AM on July 15, 2023 [4 favorites]

typical role of women in the Greek society

*The*? As I remember it from a college section long ago, even within the Olympiad-going cultural affinity of Greeks this varied. We overwrite a lot of them with Athenian norms from Athen’s height.

(Not egalitarian anywhere iirc, but as usual a lot more variation than is easy to describe.)
posted by clew at 8:41 AM on July 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

Mod note: [btw, this post has been added to the sidebar]
posted by taz (staff) at 2:57 AM on July 18, 2023 [2 favorites]

σφάζω might have undergone at this time, but it's most commonly used in Homeric and Attic Greek to refer to slaughter by throat-cutting, ritual or otherwise

Actually used in this sense to this day - that's the verb you would use in modern Greek e.g. for killing livestock.
posted by each day we work at 5:39 AM on July 19, 2023 [2 favorites]