Orphism or Popular Philosophy?

Abstract

The exploration of the Greek settlements in South Russia has produced a fair number of epitaphs in verse, which for the most part repeat poetic commonplaces: but a find of 1931 from around Kertch, the ancient Panticapaeum, has distinct interest. It is a stele, broken off at the top and bottom: traces suggest that the top was decorated with a relief representing a man and his young attendant; his name and patronymic may have accompanied this relief. The epitaph, preserved entire, in lettering assigned by the editor to the end of the first century B.C. or the beginning of the first century A.D. and by Dr. Sterling Dow to ca. 40–ca. 100 A.D., runs as follows:οὐ λόγον ἀλλὰ βίον σοφίης ἐτυπώσαο δόξαν,αὐτοδαὴς ἱερῶν γινόμενος κριμάτων.εὕδων οὖν, ‘Εκαταῖε, μεσόχρονος ἴσθ’ ὅτι θᾶσσονκύκλον ἀνιηρῶν ἐξέφυγες καμάτων.