Bowie on Elegy: A footnote

Extract

It may be desirable to draw attention to an item of some interest for the history of literary genres which has just appeared in a Greek periodical which is not, as yet, widely accessible.

Angelos Matthaiou (ΗΟΡΟΣ iv [1986] 31–4) publishes two grave stelai from Nikaia, between Athens and Piraeus. The script is unusual, in that the texts are written retrograde and from the bottom to the top of the stele. The obvious parallel for this is a funerary text discussed by Missjeffery in BSA lvii (1962) 136 no. 42 and dated by her around 540; one of her last scholarly observations was to confirm that the new texts appeared to be in the same hand.