Marble base of a grave stele with an epigram commemorating the loss of the young daughter Vitti
An epigram engraved on the front side of a marble base from Amorgos bears testimony to a mother’s pain over the premature loss of her daughter.
The inscription unveils the name of the deceased Vitti, who passed away prematurely, before she could become a woman and experience her social completion.
The monument upon which the epigram is engraved, would have been erected on a stepped pedestal and would have most likely served as the base of a funerary stele (sema: grave marker) decorated with the representation of the girl. It would have been installed by Vitti’s mother to honour her child through the centuries. Expressed in a moving and poetic language, the epigram indicates that the bereaved mother commissioned a great poet to compose it, a fact that reflects the high level of her intellectual cultivation.
The monument in its entirety would have been an imposing structure built of Parian marble that would have manifested the affluence of Vitti’s family in the society of Amorgos in the 5th century BC.
