The sad tale of a pig who died in a traffic accident on the Via Egnatia

One of the sites I visit on my Greece tours is Edessa, a town in Macedonia. I originally included the town in my Alexander the Great itinerary because for years scholars believed that Edessa might be the location of Aigai, the ancient capital of Macedon, and the site of the royal cemetery. Anyway, Nicholas Hammond’s theory, and the later excavations of Manolis Andronikos and others proved that this was not the case, and that Aigai was actually further south at the modern village of Vergina. However, the town of Edessa is beautifully situated and well worth a visit, not only for the ancient site of Longos, but also for the beautiful waterfalls and the interesting traditional buildings relating to the hemp industry.

This blog post focuses on an object discovered at the site which is known as ‘the pig stele of Edessa’. Dating to the 2^nd or 3^rd century CE, the stele shows a man driving a chariot drawn by four mules (possibly horses) and two pigs, accompanied by a Greek inscription. The inscription tells the story of a pig who travelled from Dalmatia via the cities of Dyrrachium and Apollonia on his way to Emathia but who died in or near ancient Longos, where the accident was recorded on the stele. The photo below is a copy of the stele which can be seen at the site (taken by Philipp Pilhofer CC BY-SA 3.0).

As one might imagine, there have been a number of interpretations of both the pictorial relief and the inscription, as they each raise a number of questions. Principle among them is the question of the subject of the commemoration. Was this really a grave monument for a pig? Here is the inscription, which is in the form of a poem (translation fr0m Wiki):

A pig, friend to everybody χοῖρος ὁ πᾶσι φίλος,

a young four-footed one τετράπους νέος,

here I lay, having left ἐνθάδε κεῖμαι

behind, the land of Dalmatia, Δαλματίης δάπεδον προλιπὼν

as an offered gift, δῶρον προσενεχθείς

at Dyrrachion I walked καὶ Δυρράχιν δὲ ἐπάτησα

Apollonia yearning Ἀπολλωνίαν τε ποθήσας

and all the road I crossed καὶ πᾶσαν γαίην διέβην

on foot alone steadily. ποσὶ μοῦνος ἄλιπτος

But by the force of a wheel νῦν δὲ τροχοῖο βίῃ

I have now lost the light τὸ φάος προλέλοιπα

longing to see Emathia Ἠμαθίην δὲ ποθῶν

and the Phallic Chariot κατιδεῖν φαλλοῖο δὲ ἅρμα

Here now I lie, owing ἐνθάδε νῦν κεῖμαι

nothing to death anymore τῷ θανάτῳ μηκέτ’ ὀφειλόμενος

There are examples of grave stele and epitaphs for various types of animals in the ancient Greek and Roman world. Some were dedicated to actual animals, others were fiction or even metaphors, but the relief from Edessa is unique in that it commemorates a pig and a road accident. The unusual nature of the event depicted has given rise to the theory that there is a play on words, and that the subject of the accident was not a pig but a person named Choiros since the word used for pig (χοῖρος) is also attested as a name for males (there are about 20 examples). Parallels have been drawn with a Roman grave stele dating to the 2^nd century CE which shows a Maltese dog accompanied by an inscription ‘To Helena, foster daughter, the incomparable & worthy soul’. But is Helena the dog or a girl, represented by her pet? We don’t know (see Further Reading for picture reference).

If we are to take the image on the relief literally then it is the epitaph of a pig, as the image certainly shows a poor pig trampled under the wheels of the wagon as it is being driven along. The legs of the mules show that the wagon is in motion. Another pig runs in front of the wagon – though some scholars have interpreted this as the same pig, a sort of ‘before and after’ depiction of the accident.

The inscription tells us quite a lot about the pig’s last journey, and scholars have noted that Edessa, the location of the stele, and the two cities mentioned in the inscription are situated on the Via Egnatia, the famous Roman road that ran from the Adriatic to Byzantium. The pig’s journey started in Dalmatia, and then he travelled south with his master to Dyrrachium before presumably heading off along the Via Egnatia.

Dyrrachium, an important port on the Adriatic (modern day Durrës) was the principal starting point of the Via Egnatia, a road which by the time of the stela was about 400 years old in its (then) current form, but which lay on a much older route. To continue his journey to Emathia, which the inscription gives as the final destination, our pig should have continued south east along the famous road, through Macedonia, until meeting his untimely end in Edessa. To get to the region of Emathia, the travellers should have continued on past Pella and then south via a branch road (map below courtesy Eric Gabba CC BY-SA 2.5).

However, the inscription next mentions the city of Apollonia. Apollonia is some 90 kilometres to the south of Dyrrachium and at one time an alternative starting point of the Via Egnatia. The town was not on the coast but reached via the River Aous which was navigable until the 3^rd century CE when an earthquake occurred which changed the course of the river and led to it silting up. The two branches of the road met up near a trading post called Mansio Scampa, now the modern city of Elbasan, which by the date of the stele was well on its way to being a flourishing Roman city.

If the pig(s) and master were following the route of the text on the stele, they were going a very circuitous route to get to Emathia. Was the writer was just trying to show that they had traversed a great distance ‘and all the road I crossed’ and being from Edessa just used some names of cities he knew were to the West? Some scholars have suggested that the wagon driver was an itinerant merchant, plying his wares among the cities along the major branches of the Via Egnatia. This begs the question – what was his merchandise? Was it the pigs themselves, brought from Dalmatia to sell? But the poem describes the pig as a gift to be offered.

A close look at the stele shows that there is something on the back of the wagon. Eric Csapo has identified the object as ‘a phallus-bird icon of Dionysus’. In this case, the phallus bird would not be merchandise but would fit with the last section of the poem which tells us that the pig was on his way, as an offering, to a phallic procession, a type of religious festival which was common in Greece. Csapo notes that these cult objects were sometimes transported on carts, there is another example of a depiction from Delos. Here is another phallus bird from Csapo's article, just in case you weren't familiar with the species....

The question of whether Choiros was an unlucky pig (well, maybe not that unlucky as if he had reached the festival and been sacrificed he would not have been immortalized on a stele) or a man named Choiros whose passing was remembered in this light-hearted way remains and I am sure there is more to be said. When I was looking at the various possibilities, I came across an article by Marina McCoy, and her work on the City of Sows in Plato’s Republic. She points out that there are many double-entendres of the words for sow and pig in Greek comedy, and that Choiros or ‘piggie’ is sometimes used for the genitalia of a young woman. It struck me that, although this doesn’t necessarily help our understanding of this object, it adds a new layer to the puns within the poem – a piggie that is a friend to everybody, longing to see the Phallic chariot. There are, unfortunately, too many things about this intriguing object that remain a mystery, but trying to work them out is certainly fun.

Carolyn Perry

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The sad tale of a pig who died in a traffic accident on the Via Egnatia

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