Do you know what a cento poem is? Have you ever read one or tried to write one? The Latin word cento means “patched cloth,” and the same idea in Ancient Greek was expressed by the word κέντρων. Both terms were also used to describe verses composed of scraps from other authors. A cento, then, is a literary work collaged entirely from other writers’ verses or passages. One famous modern example is T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, which begins with a quotation from Petronius’ Satyricon (Chapter 48.8).

Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σίβυλλα τί θέλεις; respondebat illa: άποθανεῖν θέλω.

"For I myself with my own eyes saw the Sibyl at Cumae suspended in a flask, and when the boys said to her, ‘Sibyl, what’s your wish?,’ she would reply, ‘I want to die.’" (English translation by G. Schmeling, Loeb Classical Library 15).

Writing a cento (or κέντρων) was already a familiar literary practice in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, although only a few verses from Homeric and Virgilian centos have survived. An inscription discovered in 1931 among the remains of an old basilica near the village of Suvodol, in present-day North Macedonia ‒ in the ancient region of Lyncestis ‒ offers unique testimony to the popularity of this literary form in the Roman Empire.

The inscription, published as number 27 in Inscriptiones Graecae Volume X.2.2.1, dates from the 3rd century AD and is now kept in the Archaeological Museum of the Republic of North Macedonia. It was engraved on a white marble slab that served as a column base. The content of the inscription, however, suggests that its primary function was funerary. It is a funerary poem composed of Homeric verses, dedicated to Eugenius.

But what is Eugenius’s story? The poem offers no straightforward information about the deceased’s exact age, his family, or who erected the monument. It consists solely of Homeric verses and allusions to epic poetry ‒ yet perhaps there are clues within the text that can help us glimpse Eugenius’s fate.

The poem is composed as a dialogue with the deceased, addressed in the second person singular. It begins with a prayer ‒ a simple wish directed to the dead child: “Hear me, my child, and rise up again for your parents.” This opening verse tells us that both of Eugenius’s parents were alive when he died. However, the language throughout the poem suggests that a single speaker ‒ masculine in gender ‒ is addressing the child, most likely the father.

The next line poses a question: “Why have you left the sweet light and come into the darkness?” The metaphor of life as light and death as darkness is a common one, but there is something more in this verse. The interrogative τίπτε in Homer is typically used to express surprise at an unexpected or sudden event ‒ often someone’s appearance or departure. Could Eugenius’s death, then, have been such an unexpected and sudden departure?

These verses, together with the following ones, have close parallels in Homer’s Odyssey and recall well-known scenes from the epic ‒ such as Odysseus’s visit to the Underworld; the council of the gods where Athena persuades Zeus to allow Odysseus to return home; Athena, disguised as a stranger, meeting Odysseus’s son Telemachus; and Telemachus calling an assembly to confront his mother’s suitors. Eugenius’s wisdom and piety are praised like those of Odysseus, and his beauty is compared to that of Telemachus. Eugenius’s father grieves like old Aegyptius, who still has other children alive but cannot forget his son Antiphus, who followed Odysseus and was devoured by the Cyclops.

And then the funerary poem goes:

But, my heart is torn for wise Eugenius,

ill-fated man, who far from his parents suffered.

The use of verses 47–48 from the first book of the Odyssey ‒“But my heart is torn for wise Odysseus, ill-fated man, who far from his friends has long been suffering woes” (trans. A. T. Murray, rev. E. Dimock, Loeb Classical Library 104) ‒ on the inscription from Lyncestis is neither accidental nor merely poetic. Rather, it forms a deliberate allusion suggesting that Eugenius, like Odysseus, suffered far from his family.

The remaining part of the inscription is damaged, but in the seventeenth line the Homeric phrase σε τυτθὸν ἐόντα (“when you were young”) appears, and the verse probably read: “Who delivered you, when you were young, to an evil fate?” This implies that Eugenius died in youth, and that his death was likely violent.

This gravestone, like others from the region of Lyncestis, testifies to the literacy of the local inhabitants during the Roman imperial period. Homer was well known throughout the Greco-Roman world, and learning his verses was part of παιδεία ‒ the education deemed essential for a prosperous life. The attempt to compose a cento from Homeric verses thus reveals someone educated well enough to undertake such a task.

More importantly, however, this gravestone bears witness to the enduring power of poetry as a means of expressing personal grief, processing loss, and finding consolation in the most difficult of times.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Elena Džukeska