An Olbian Verse Epitaph

This small Olbian epitaph belongs in the Scythian library because it gives a Greek funerary witness to Olbia's place inside the Scythian horizon: the dead man's fatherland is named as "Olbia, a city of Scythia."

The poem is not a political treatise and should not be made to carry more than it says. Its value is compact and exact: in a civic funerary voice from Olbia, Scythia is the geographic and cultural field in which the city is named.

The translation below was made from the inspected Greek text captured from PHI Greek Inscriptions, IosPE I² 226 / PH184420.

Translation

This tomb holds him, stranger, dead after coming to the end of life familiar to all.

His fatherland was Olbia, a city of Scythia, and among mortals his name was one compounded of Fate and Gifts.

He was an old man who lived to a good age. Going to the appointed ground, he left two living children behind.

O divine power, may you send him, dear alike to human beings and immortals, into the house of the pious.

Colophon

This Good Works Translation was prepared for the Scythian shelf by the New Tianmu Anglican Church from the Ancient Greek inscription text printed below. The English is a new rendering from the Greek. PHI Greek Inscriptions was used as the source text, with the local HTML capture retained for verification.

The translation is a new Good Works rendering from the inspected Greek source text.

Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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Source Text: IosPE I² 226

Ancient Greek source text from PHI Greek Inscriptions, IosPE I² 226 / PH184420. Presented here for reference, study, and verification alongside the English translation above.

τὸν [βι]οτᾶς ἐπὶ τέρμα σύ[νηθες πᾶσι μολόντα],

ὦ ξέ[νε], ἀποφθίμενον τύμβο[ς ὅδ' ἐγκατέχει]·

ᾧ πάτ[ρα] Σκυθίας πόλις Ὀλβία, ἐ[ν δὲ βροτοῖσι]

μοίρης καὶ δ[ώ]ρω[ν] σύνθετον οὔν[ομ' ἔην].

εὐγήρως ὁ πρέσ[βυς], ὃς εἰς πεπρωμ[ένον οὖδας]

ἐρχόμενο[ς ζ]ωο[ὺς π]αῖδας ἔλει[πε δύο].

ἅμα τὸν ἀ[νθ]ρώ[ποι]σι καὶ ἀθανάτ[οισι ποθεινόν],

ὦ δαῖμον, π[έμ]ψ[αι]ς εἰς δόμον ε[ὐσεβέων].

Source Colophon

The source text was inspected from PHI Greek Inscriptions, IosPE I² 226 / PH184420, North Shore of the Black Sea, Olbia, dated by PHI to the second century BCE. The source capture is preserved in the Scythian source archive.

PHI prints restored letters in brackets throughout the eight-line epigram. The English follows the restored syntax but keeps the translation modest: the key Scythian phrase is Σκυθίας πόλις Ὀλβία, "Olbia, a city of Scythia." The phrase μοίρης καὶ δώρων σύνθετον οὔνομ' ἔην is rendered literally as a name "compounded of Fate and Gifts"; this pass did not identify the personal name behind the wordplay with certainty.

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