'Durat adhuc luctus matris, imago perit': The epigraphic and funerary aspects of Niobe’s speech in Auson. Epigr. 58 Green

Focused on the tale of Niobe, Auson. Epigr. 58 Green seems to comprise allusions to Ovid’s Metamorphoses and contains sophisticated literary features also attested in epigraphic sources; the extent to which these stylistic devices are exemplified in the poem led Rudolf Peiper in 1886 to include the composition in the section of Ausonius’ Epitaphia rather than in the section of his Epigrammata. The purpose of this article is to shed new light on the stereotypical characteristics of Niobe’s lament in the poem, to discuss the rhetorical strategies of the discourse of the heroine, and to explore the literariness of the epigram, which, through its exploitation of diπerent literary genres, can be interpreted as a refined example of the afterlife of Augustan poetry in Late Antiquity.