Revisiting IRT (Inscriptions of Roman Tripolitania 1952/2009/2021) for #EpigraphyTuesday: IRT 690: Undated Greek funerary verse for Delarkes (found in Al-Khums/Homs, Libya, on road from Oea to Lepcis Magna) irt2021.inslib.kcl.ac.uk/en/inscripti...

#EpigraphyTuesday There are some lovely poetic lines in this one: δόμον / Πλουτῆοϲ ἔχω / κὲ χάλκεον / ὕπνον "I inhabit the house of Pluto and I sleep a bronze-like sleep" (tr. Reynolds, 2009).

#EpigraphyTuesday The writing's not pretty though. Letters range from 12mm–40mm, and the editor observes, "The stone-cutter was following, with partial success only, a model which he did not understand." Some emendation and speculation therefore required…

#EpigraphyTuesday The most fun part of looking at this text is untangling the apparatus criticus and the sometimes quite different texts understood behind the translations of Reynolds 2009 (who doesn't always follow her own 1952 edition) and Dobias-Lalou 2021.

E.g. Roueché et al. 2021 prints the deceased's name as Λάρκιϲ (preceded by emphatic δή); Reynolds/Ward-Perkins 1952 proposed Δηλάρκης, which is what Reynolds 2009 translated. Dobias-Lalou 2021 translates "moi Larkis (Larcius)". #EpigraphyTuesday

More fun, the first half of l. 21 (highlighted in image), Θ..ΚΕΕ in R+WP's 1952 diplomatic, and interpreted θ´ καὶ ε´ (the numerals 9 and 5), but translated as "65? years" on the grounds that the symbols given make no sense. Dobias-Lalou 2021 translates "75 ans", reading ο̣´ κὲ ε´. #epigraphytuesday