ZBORNIK - Matica srpska

Zsigmond Ritoók
THE SEIKILOS POEM
UDC 930.2:003.071(38)
In 1883 in Asia Minor, near to the ancient Tralleis, an interesting
epigraphic stone came to light. Some curious — and for the
first publisher of the inscription enigmatic — signs on it were soon
recognized by O. Crusius as musical notations and the reading of
them given by him is with a slight modification valid also today.
Thus it became clear that the text in question, preceded by a distich
and finished by three words in prose, is a singable short poem. The
whole stone is the tombstone of a certain Seikilos set up by himself
in his life, sometime in the 2 nd century A. D. 1
Since the number of the documents of ancient Greek music is
not very great, it is understandable that the rather rich pertinent
scholarly literature has mainly dealt with the musical problems of
the inscription (melody, rhythm), the more so, as the little poem
itself is a commonplace one, an expression of the carpe diem idea.
However, it deserves perhaps a glance: Sometimes even on a commonplace
subject an interesting poem can be written.
The text is simple, no difficulty seems to arise. Still some points
are worth while to have a closer look at them. Vs. 1: ������ must
have here the meaning 'shine' or something like this, but the contrasting
parallelism in the next line suggests the meaning 'to shine
1 First publication by W. M. Ramsay, Unedited Inscriptions from Asia Minor:
BCH 7, 1883, 277; O. Crusius, Ein Liederfragment auf einer antiken Statuenbasis:
Philologus 50, 1891, 163—172; O. Crusius, Zu neuentdeckten Musikresten:
Philologus 52, 1894, 160—173 (with a reproduction of the inscription in drawing
where also the last line — later cut off — can be seen. — The standard edition
today: E. Pöhlmann — M. L. West, Documents of Ancient Greek Music. Oxford
2001. N° 23, p. 88—91 with a full bibliography.
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