What’s Up with Ancient Greek Epitaphs

In fact, a very large chunk of the book we call the Greek Anthology is nothing but epitaphs. Compare that with the TOC of the Greek Anthology:

1 Christian epigrams

2 Some guy’s description of certain statues

3 Inscriptions on some particular temple

4 Various prefaces to the collections that were raided to produce this one

5 Love and sex [*important]

6 Votive inscriptions

7 Epitaphs [*important]

8 The epigrams of “Gregory of Nazianzus” (whoever he was)

9 Figure-of-speech epigrams

10 Ethical ones

11 Funny ones, or ones on the theme “Let the good times roll”

12 Boy love [*important]

13 Metrical curiosities

14 Word games, riddles, prophesies

15 Miscellaneous

Also some versions have a sixteenth book of epigrams about paintings. The good epitaph poem requires neither corpse nor stone, and yet it requires something more than paper and poet.

Source: www.theparisreview.org