Epitaph of Hippias of Elis

[autotokalon]

Ran across an elegy by Hippias (cf. Pausanias V.25.4) when reading Dorothy Tarrant’s commentary on the Hippias Major. Quoting Brunck, Tarrant printed the text as thus:

However, when compared to Brunck’s Analecta Vol.II, p.57 (thankfully it’s on the Google Books), Tarrant’s text seems to contain some mistakes. Brunck printed it as thus:

Tarrant’s τύμβος should be τύμβους, but is κᾀν = καὶ ἄν or καί ἐν?

Printing issues aside, here are my questions:

(1) Does οὗ refer to πόντος? I somewhat don’t understand the thoughts in the last two lines. Whose beautiful name? and the sweet love for whom? πόντος seems not to make sense.

(2) What source did Brunck consult? or is this elegy collected in any more recent edition? Loeb’s Early Greek Philosophers, Hippias section, doesn’t have it.

Thank you.

[mwh]

The reference of the epigram is to the maritime disaster mentioned by Pausanias (5.25), which I presume actually happened. The Messenians sent a chorus of 35 boys to a festival at Rhegium, and in the strait of Messina—notoriously dangerous—they all drowned.

There was an ancient group of bronze statues dedicated to them at Olympia. The conceit in the epigram (remarkable at such an early date, if it is in fact by Hippias) is that the sea itself fashioned their images.

And the last line is similarly romantic: “Even among the dead we have sweet love.” οὗ “where,” I take it.