- Source
- Herodotus. Godley, Alfred Denis, editor. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press; William Heinemann, Ltd., 1920-1925 (printing).
- Translation
- AI-generated (gemini-3.5-flash) — machine translation; may contain errors
- Languages
- 日本語 · English · 简体中文 · 한국어
- CTS URN
- urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0016.tlg001.humanitext-grc2:2.85.1-2.85.2
- Generated
- Humanitext Reader · reader.humanitext.ai · 2026-11-06
Describes the Egyptian customs of mourning for a person of standing, detailing how women and men separately express grief through physical lamentation before the corpse is taken for embalming.
θρῆνοι δὲ καὶ ταφαί σφεων εἰσὶ αἵδε· τοῖσι ἂν ἀπογένηται1 ἐκ τῶν οἰκίων ἄνθρωπος τοῦ τις καὶ λόγος ᾖ, τὸ θῆλυ γένος πᾶν τὸ ἐκ τῶν οἰκίων τούτων κατʼ ὦν ἐπλάσατο2 τὴν κεφαλὴν πηλῷ ἢ καὶ τὸ πρόσωπον, κἄπειτα ἐν τοῖσι οἰκίοισι λιποῦσαι3 τὸν νεκρὸν αὐταὶ ἀνὰ τὴν πόλιν στρωφώμεναι τύπτονται ἐπεζωσμέναι καὶ φαίνουσαι τοὺς μαζούς, σὺν δέ σφι αἱ προσήκουσαι πᾶσαι, ἑτέρωθεν δὲ οἱ ἄνδρες, τύπτονται ἐπεζωμένοι καὶ οὗτοι. ἐπεὰν δὲ ταῦτα ποιήσωσι, οὕτω ἐς τὴν ταρίχευσιν κομίζουσι.4
Their lamentations and burials are as follows. Whenever a man of some standing dies from a household, all the female kind of that household daub their head with mud, or even their face, and then, leaving the corpse in the house, they themselves wander through the city and beat themselves, girt up and exposing their breasts, and with them all their female kinswomen. On the other side, the men also beat themselves, they too being girt up. When they have done this, they then carry the corpse to the embalming.
- 2.85.1τοῖσι ἂν ἀπογένηται
The relative pronoun τοῖσι is the Ionic dative plural corresponding to οἷς, introducing a conditional relative clause with ἂν and the subjunctive ἀπογένηται. It refers to the household members who experience the death.
- 2.85.1κατʼ ὦν ἐπλάσατο
This is an example of tmesis, where the Ionic particle ὦν (equivalent to οὖν) is inserted between the prefix κατα- and the verb ἐπλάσατο (from καταπλάσσω, aorist middle).
- 2.85.1λιποῦσαι
While the formal grammatical subject is the singular collective noun τὸ θῆλυ γένος πᾶν, the aorist participle λιποῦσαι (and subsequent participles στρωφώμεναι and ἐπεζωσμέναι) is in the feminine plural, agreeing with the logical subject (the individual women) in a constructio ad sensum.
- 2.85.2κομίζουσι
The object of this transitive verb is omitted but is understood from the context to be τὸν νεκρόν (the corpse) mentioned in the previous section.