Farewell to Arms – Farewell in Arms. Depictions of Weapons on Stone and in Hellenistic Inscriptional Epigrams

Through four case studies I discuss the importance and frequency of the appearance of weapons (an important element of epic imagery) in funerary poetry, and its relation to representations of arms on gravestones and monuments in the Hellenistic period, geographically ranging from Lycia and Caria to the Black Sea, from mainland Greece to the Aegean islands. One of the most common features of poetic epitaphs for soldiers (including citizens, mercenaries, and soldiers belonging to royal armies) is the celebration of the military valor (arete) of the deceased; on the other hand, except for the spear, weapons are not mentioned often in funerary poetry. When they are not mentioned in the epitaph, or when an epitaph is not present, weapons are sometimes represented on the funerary monument itself, in the form of reliefs or paintings, either in the context of a battle scene, or carried by the standing deceased, or simply as isolated objects, as symbols of his profession or social rank in life.