Mourning mothers and premature deaths. Thetis's role in Greek funerary epigrams

In the Iliad, Thetis’ characterization as a figure of grief is particularly evident: see, e.g., Il. I 414–418 and 503–510, where she laments Achilles’ mortality, and especially Il. 18.52–64, where she pronounces for her son a singular goos ante mortem, exhibiting many features usually associated with actual lamentations for the dead. Moving from this peculiar characterization of the goddess, attested also in subsequent sources, Cannavale’s chapter investigates the influence of the literary model of Thetis as a mourning mother in threnodic contexts, in particular funerary epigram. Thetis’ model is present in Greek epitaphs in two different ways: either her painful experience is explicitly recalled as particularly relevant to the consolatory topos ‘all must die, even the sons of gods’ (cf. e.g. GVI 1695, 1804, 1197), or her Iliadic lament speeches are evoked through lexical and thematic echoes (cf. e.g. AP VII 486, SGO 16/61/04), thus creating an intertextual dialogue which elevates premature deaths of ordinary people — and the connected grief of mortal mothers — to a heroic level.