"IG" VII 53: an epigraphic "rara avis" in the corpus of Greek metrical inscriptions

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This paper aims to study the inscription published in "IG" VII 53 from a linguistic point of view. It consists of a prose section that includes an epigram dedicated to the Megarians fallen during the Persian Wars. The inscription was presumably composed in the fifth century BC, but the preserved text was not inscribed before the fourth century AD. After revisiting this text’s main scholarship, which has studied this inscription mainly from an archaeological, historical or literary approach, we apply a two-level linguistic analysis based on (a) the comparison of its linguistic data with epigraphical prose and other literary influences, and (b) the metrical constraints that could determine the choice between local and literary forms. As a complement to what current scholarship suggests, this methodological approach will allow us to distinguish to what extent it is possible to trace the original linguistic features of the earliest version of this epigram, as well as whether and how metrics contributed to preserve them.