The Tattoo Elegy
A New Translation of P. Sorb. inv. 2254 + P. Brux. inv. E. 8934
A couple of months ago, I indulged my mother by accompanying her to see Theresa Caputo, a.k.a. the Long Island Medium, perform her live “experience.” Caputo is a charlatan; she is vulgar, she is a nationalist, and she takes advantage of heartbroken people desperate to hear from the dead. At her show, she walked through the audience posing vague questions such as “Who connects with a mother figure?” Each time, a number of hands would go up. I also noticed that she had an especially effective strategy for preying on younger members of the crowd: “Spirit is indicating something about a tattoo. What is the special thing about the tattoo?” This typically prompted a gasp, followed by a teary and detailed answer.
Caputo is a huckster and she knows what she is doing. So-called memorial tattoos in honor of deceased loved ones are growing in popularity. Nearly 40% of adults under thirty have a tattoo (some estimates put it closer to half). And most tattoos have special meaning to the people who chose to endure the needles that jabbed them into their skin.
But tattoos were different in ancient Greece and Rome, where it seems that only vulnerable people — slaves, soldiers, and prisoners — were tattooed, and always against their will. Elsewhere in the ancient world, human bodies were inked for religious or decorative purposes, but for ancient Greeks and Romans tattoos “usually signified degradation” (so C.P. Jones, in a 1987 article in JRS). In other words, tattoos were not the expressions of individuality and affirmations of agency that we see them as today. They were permanent reminders — and proclamations — that someone’s body was not their own.
The Athenian comic stage seems to have teemed with masters who menaced their slaves with tattooing. A character in a fragment of Eupolis (Athens, 5th century BCE) adds procedural detail to the threat: “I will tattoo you with three needles” (ἐγὼ δέ γε στίξω σε βελόναισιν τρισίν, F 277 Kassel-Austin). In a mime of Herodas (Mime 5, 3rd century BCE), a woman named Bitinna even threatens to tattoo her own lover — who is also her slave — as punishment for infidelity. The verb is again στίξω, the future of στίζω, which is related to a number of English words including stitch, sting, and stick.
Both Greek and Roman sources preserve a wide array of references to punitive tattooing (Jones’ JRS article provides a whole compendium). But even among such a rich dossier, one witness to the atrocious practice stands out for its imagination, vitriol, and detail: the so-called “Tattoo Elegy.”
What we have of that text is preserved on two fragmentary pieces of a single papyrus that dates to the early or mid-second century BCE. The poem is in elegiacs, and there is some evidence that it was once attributed to Hermesianax. Whoever the author, the work marks an intriguing example of ancient curse poetry, the genre known as arae. The narrator begins each gruesome ekphrasis of a mythological scene with a threat to tattoo (στίξω, again) an aspect of it — a character or object — on a part of his victim’s body.
As my own small contribution to Eidolon’s dedicated tattoo issue, here I offer a new translation of these vivid and “tantalizing” (literally…) fragments.
If you are interested in finding out more about this poem, the most accessible and up-to-date resource is Richard Rawles’ 2016 introduction, text, and commentary (“The Tattoo Elegy,” in David Sider, ed., Hellenistic Poetry: A Selection. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 40–55). As far as I know, the only other complete English translation of the fragments appears in Jane Lightfoot’s Hellenistic Collection in the Loeb Classical Library.
col.i.
…songs will tell of…
…how I flash like a fire
…I WILL TATTOO on your back great Eurytion
…Nephele’s son, unquaking in might
…ripped to shreds by Amphitryon’s boy
[lacuna]
…he was trying to make a pass at the girl
…[no] shame at public outrage
…[no] shame at [the gods’] awful anger, which with wim[ps
…[always] lays down harsh…
…that should be your punishment too, for no good ever came
….of his vile audacity…
…giant tripod…
…power, above his shaggy
…he smashed it into his chest
…man… no…
…Tritonis Athena gave him a weapon
…she spared him, fiercely
…with one hand he grabbed him by the throat
Raised a brutal club with the other
…[his] temple and he smashed all the bones together
…brains oozed out
…at the blow, and his soul wafted on air
col.ii.
And Justice, undying virgin, gave a grin,
She who looks close with eyes wide open
Her seat in Zeus Son of Chronus’ heart.
And I WILL TATTOO on your head a massive bold rock
The one that hangs, even in Hades, over the head
Of Tantalus, the price of his brainless tongue — yes, immense
Suffering kept rolling upon him, even in Hades’ halls.
I mean him— the man who feasted with the undying gods
Child of Zeus Cloud-Collector,
Blessed in wealth and in children — his privilege.
But like a moron he said whatever he liked
And didn’t get away with it. So what makes you think that you will?
I hope the idea never pleases the gods.
Still I WILL TATTOO your brow with a white-tusked beast,
The one that ransacked the Aetolians’ hard-labored land
On Artemis’ whim — the thought just tickled her fancy —
It ravaged the grain and ravaged the grapes
And butchered whole packs of hunting hounds
Till Meleager, Oineus’ son, jammed his ash spear
Right up in its flank. He was, after all, the best hunter
Of all the heroes who gathered there then.
Theseus, grandson of Pittheus, came; Aethon came;
Ancaeus came giant axe in tow;
Leda and Lord Zeus’ boys came too.
[the fragment breaks off]
Johanna Hanink is Associate Professor of Classics at Brown University and is beginning to moonlight as a translator. Her translation of Konstantinos’ Poulis’ short story “The Leonardo DiCaprio of Exarcheia” was published in Brooklyn Rail’s InTranslation last fall, and a collection of selected speeches from Thucydides (How to Think about War) is due to be published in 2019 with Princeton University Press.
