Ἀτώτας μεταλλεύς.
Πόντου ἀπ’ Εὐεξείνου Παφλαγὼν μεγάθυμος Ἀτώτας
ἧς γαίας τηλοῦ σῶμ’ ἀνέπαυσε πόνων.
τέχνηι δ’ οὔτις ἔριζε· Πυλαιμένεος δ’ ἀπὸ ῥίζης
εἴμ’, ὃς Ἀχιλλῆος χειρὶ δαμεὶς ἔθανεν.
From after 350 BCE in Athens
Atotas the miner,
The great-hearted Paphlagonian Atotas,
From the Black Sea
Rests his body (from toil)* far from that land.
Nobody contends his skill.
I am of the stock of Pylaimenes,
who died having been defeated by the hand of Achilles.
IG II2 10051
In this epitaph, the Atotas tells us some very interesting things about himself. First, he is a miner. To be a miner in Attica in the 5th or 4th century means that one worked at Sounion, a silver mine south of Athens. There are a number of accounts of how the miners there were slaves. That Atotas used to be a slave would make sense as he identifies himself as Paphlagonian. The Paphlagonians were a people who lived in what is now modern day Turkey. They are one of the groups of people who fought alongside the Trojans in the Trojan War. This takes us Atotas’ description of his lineage: he describe himself as a descendent of Pylaimenes, a man whom Homer identifies as the king of the Paphlagonians in the Iliad. Intriguingly, Homer does not say that Pylaimenes is killed by Achilles, as this inscription would suggestion. It is Menelaus and Antilochus who kill Pylaimenes (5.576), but when Homer describes the death of Harpalion, the son of Pylaimenes (13.650), Pylaimenes is still alive (13.658-9). Quite possibly Atotas new an alternative story of how Pylaimenes faces Achilles and is defeated by him.
However, that isn’t even the most interesting part of this inscription: why would Atotas write about who his famous ancestor killed by rather than the famous people that his ancestor killed?
My explanation is that Atotas used to be a slave who was a miner but is now free. A metic in Athens, he doesn’t try to hide his Paphlagonian ancestry. To do so would have been pointless, as anyone could easily tell that he wasn’t a native. However, he wants to emphasize how the Paphlagonians are not complete aliens: they were participants in the Trojan War, the founding moment of Greek literature. Ergo, as a Paphlagonian, he is in fact a participant of Greek culture, even though he is not ethnically Greek. Indeed, the inferiority of his own ethnicity is emphasized when describes how his ancestor died rather than whom his ancestor killed.
*For this translation to work the accents would have to be πονῶν. However, it’s unclear to me why πόνων (toiling) is the preferred reading. I need to do more research on this.
Πόντου ἀπ’ Εὐεξείνου Παφλαγὼν μεγάθυμος Ἀτώτας
ἧς γαίας τηλοῦ σῶμ’ ἀνέπαυσε πόνων.
τέχνηι δ’ οὔτις ἔριζε· Πυλαιμένεος δ’ ἀπὸ ῥίζης
εἴμ’, ὃς Ἀχιλλῆος χειρὶ δαμεὶς ἔθανεν.
From after 350 BCE in Athens
Atotas the miner,
The great-hearted Paphlagonian Atotas,
From the Black Sea
Rests his body (from toil)* far from that land.
Nobody contends his skill.
I am of the stock of Pylaimenes,
who died having been defeated by the hand of Achilles.
IG II2 10051
In this epitaph, the Atotas tells us some very interesting things about himself. First, he is a miner. To be a miner in Attica in the 5th or 4th century means that one worked at Sounion, a silver mine south of Athens. There are a number of accounts of how the miners there were slaves. That Atotas used to be a slave would make sense as he identifies himself as Paphlagonian. The Paphlagonians were a people who lived in what is now modern day Turkey. They are one of the groups of people who fought alongside the Trojans in the Trojan War. This takes us Atotas’ description of his lineage: he describe himself as a descendent of Pylaimenes, a man whom Homer identifies as the king of the Paphlagonians in the Iliad. Intriguingly, Homer does not say that Pylaimenes is killed by Achilles, as this inscription would suggestion. It is Menelaus and Antilochus who kill Pylaimenes (5.576), but when Homer describes the death of Harpalion, the son of Pylaimenes (13.650), Pylaimenes is still alive (13.658-9). Quite possibly Atotas new an alternative story of how Pylaimenes faces Achilles and is defeated by him.
However, that isn’t even the most interesting part of this inscription: why would Atotas write about who his famous ancestor killed by rather than the famous people that his ancestor killed?
My explanation is that Atotas used to be a slave who was a miner but is now free. A metic in Athens, he doesn’t try to hide his Paphlagonian ancestry. To do so would have been pointless, as anyone could easily tell that he wasn’t a native. However, he wants to emphasize how the Paphlagonians are not complete aliens: they were participants in the Trojan War, the founding moment of Greek literature. Ergo, as a Paphlagonian, he is in fact a participant of Greek culture, even though he is not ethnically Greek. Indeed, the inferiority of his own ethnicity is emphasized when describes how his ancestor died rather than whom his ancestor killed.
*For this translation to work the accents would have to be πονῶν. However, it’s unclear to me why πόνων (toiling) is the preferred reading. I need to do more research on this.