Seikilos Epitaph - The Epitaph

The Epitaph

The Epitaph was discovered in 1883 by Sir W.M. Ramsay. The stone had been placed in a museum in Smyrna where it remained until the city was destroyed during the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), but was lost. Later it was found in the possession of a Turkish woman who had had the base ground down so it would serve as a support for a pot in her garden. While the stele would now stand upright, the grinding had obliterated the last line of the epitaph. The marble stele is now located in the National Museum of Denmark (Nationalmuseet), in Copenhagen.

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Famous quotes containing the word epitaph:

    And were an epitaph to be my story
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    I would have written of me on my stone:
    I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    But since Thy loud-tongu’d Blood demands Supplies,
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    I’ll tune Thy Elegies to Trumpet-sounds,
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    —James Graham Marquess of Montrose (1612–1650)