ABSTRACT
Timanthes engraved this starry lapis lazuli, a gold-speckled Persian semi-precious stone, for Demylus, as a gift for dark-haired Nikaia, from Kos, in return for a tender kiss.
(Poseidippos, Lithika, trans. R. Mairs)
Poseidippos of Pella was a Greek poet resident in Alexandria, Egypt, in the third century bce. In 2001, a papyrus containing 112 previously lost poems was recovered from the wrappings of an Egyptian mummy in Milan (Gutzwiller 2005). Among these, we find an epigram about a piece of lapis lazuli, worked and offered as a lover’s gift to a dark-haired girl from Kos, in return for a kiss. Whether Nikaia is a courtesan or the girl next door, lapis is a commodity, part of a transaction involving two things from distant places, both of which are precious to the giver. ‘She has come to dwell in a world where royal women, non-royal women, and the beautiful gems they own reflect one another as equivalent aesthetic objects’ (Kuttner 2005: 301).
