Inscribing Sorrow

Trends in Classics , a new series and journal to be edited by Franco Montanari and Antonios Rengakos, will publish innovative, interdisciplinary work which brings to the study of Greek and Latin texts the insights and methods of related disciplines such as narratology, intertextuality, reader-response criticism, and oral poetics. Both publications will seek to publish research across the full range of classical antiquity.

The series Trends in Classics Studies welcomes monographs, edited volumes, conference proceedings and collections of papers; it will provide an important forum for the ongoing debate about where Classics fits in modern cultural and historical studies.

The journal will be published twice a year with approx. 160 pp. per issue. Each year one issue will be devoted to a specific subject with articles edited by a guest editor.

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Fourth-century Attic grave epigrams reflect a transitional phase in the evolution of the genre of epigram. They testify to a shift of interest towards social issues such as the family, the deceased’s age and profession. In a turbulent period of restlessness and uncertainty that followed the devastating Peloponnesian war, the commemoration of the departed in private monuments became an effective mechanism of displaying publicly a new set of social concerns. It is within these contexts that special emphasis has been put on the composition of sepulchral epigrams, their gradual autonomization and sophistication. This book explores this decisive phase in the evolution of the epigram by reconstructing as many ancient contexts as possible on the one hand, and studying sepulchral epigrams as a poetic art on the other.