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Sea and Land

Chapter 12 examines literary sepulchral epigrams where the themes of boundaries and death are intermingled in intriguing and complex ways. The chapter illustrates how these poems bridge, strengthen, or obscure these topics, which originate in inscribed epigram in the form of separation of the dead from the living or of the body from one’s soul. As this theme develops, the boundary between sea and land emerges prominently, sometimes mapping onto, and sometimes attempting to resolve, these other separations; this theme spills out into further divisions, between flesh and bone, or between man and fish. Even epigrams seemingly unrelated, such as Agathias’s poem (AP 7.204) on a caged partridge eaten by a pet cat, can be seen as clever variations of this scheme, in a never-ending game of poetic debt and competition.