Seikilos epitaph | Hacker News Reader

Seikilos epitaph

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62 pointssauravt16 comments

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Did you really just steal a reddit comment and make it into a blog post?

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3cvdq2/what_...

Welcome to the internet :/

Where sharing is caring, right?

Jeez, they didn't even bother changing anything. It's just the top three comments copy/pasted.

And now I wish I read this comment thread before upvoting. :-/

How about mods changing the link to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seikilos_epitaph

Ok, done.

The saddest thing about the Epitaph is that the last line of it is now ruined, because in the late 19th century its owner ground it down so it would sit flat to hold her flowerpots.

If anyone is interested in ancient Greek music/music theory, the best source is undoubtedly Thomas Mathiesen's Apollo's Lyre (http://www.amazon.com/Apollos-Lyre-Theory-Antiquity-Middle/d...). I had the distinct privilege of taking his ancient music course in his last semester of teaching. The man has literally looked (in person) at every fragment of Greek music or music theory, and translated many of them himself. The book is magnificent, and you will be very unlikely to find any source more well-researched and written.

Edit: If anyone has any questions about Greek music/music theory, I'm happy to try and answer them. It's one of my favorite topics, and while I'm no expert, I probably know a little more than the average Hacker News reader.

This is beautiful. I ended up at the Wikipedia entry for it - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seikilos_epitaph - which has quite a lot of stuff about how the lyrics and music were interpreted from the original inscriptions.

The lyrics translated to English are poignant enough to deserve a reproduction here:

    While you live, shine
    have no grief at all
    life exists only for a short while
    and time demands its toll.

"Telos" has multiple meanings, both "toll" and "end/death". Time demanding toll is probably the more likely explanation, but it may well be a pun.

That said, I'm not very up to date on ancient Greek, so take this with a grain of salt.

Regarding the pun, don't forget that the dead did pay a "toll" in ancient Greek religion/mythology (to Charon, the ferryman of Hades).

There is something quite haunting about the oldest surviving melody being composed for a man's dead wife.

> I am a tombstone, an image. Seikilos placed me here as an everlasting sign of deathless remembrance

What about religious hymns of Hinduism and Zoroastrianism which were composed before 200BC and are still in use today? Are they not melodies?

For those, do we have detailed information about the actual notes that were played, or just the text of the hymns?

The hymns have specific melodies which were transferred orally as there is no music notation system. They haven't changed in millennia. They are still widely used in India in religious ceremonies.

For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBNEizCsor0

Just like with texts - how can we be even remotely sure they haven't changed? Seems terribly unlikely to me.

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