GREEK EPITAPHS.
Christopher North, speaking of the celebrated epitaph written by Simonides and graved on the monument erected in commemoration of the battle of Thermopylæ, says:—The oldest and best inscription is that on the altar-tomb of the Three Hundred. Here it is,—the Greek,—with three Latin and eighteen English versions. Start not: it is but two lines; and all Greece, for centuries, had them by heart. She forgot them, and “Greece was living Greece no more!”
Of the various English translations of this celebrated epitaph, the following are the best:—
O stranger, tell it to the Lacedæmonians,
That we lie here in obedience to their precepts.
Go tell the Spartans, thou who passest by,
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.
ON MILTIADES.
Miltiades! thy valor best
(Although in every region known)
The men of Persia can attest,
Taught by thyself at Marathon.
ON THE TOMB OF THEMISTOCLES.
By the sea’s margin, on the watery strand,
Thy monument, Themistocles, shall stand.
By this directed to thy native shore,
The merchant shall convey his freighted store;
And when our fleets are summoned to the fight,
Athens shall conquer with this tomb in sight.
ON ÆSIGENES.
Hail, universal mother! lightly rest
On that dead form
Which when with life invested ne’er opprest
Its fellow-worm.
ON TIMOCRITUS.
Timocritus adorns this humble grave;
Mars spares the coward, and destroys the brave.
ON THREE NEIGHBORING TOMBS.
This is a sailor’s—that a ploughman’s tomb;—
Thus sea and land abide one common doom.
My lot was meagre fare, disease and shame.
At length I died—you all must do the same.
Fortune and Hope, farewell! I’ve found the port:
You’ve done with me—go now, with others sport.
HELIODORA.
Tears, Heliodora! on thy tomb I shed,
Love’s last libation to the shades below;
Tears, bitter tears, by fond remembrance fed,
Are all that Fate now leaves me to bestow.
Vain sorrows! vain regrets! yet, loveliest, thee,
Thee still they follow in the silent urn,
Retracing hours of social converse free,
And soft endearments never to return.
How thou art torn, sweet flower, that smiled so fair!
Torn, and thy honored bloom with dust defiled;
Yet, holy earth, accept my suppliant prayer,
And in a mother’s arms enfold thy child.
FROM THE ALCESTIS OF EURIPIDES.
We will not look on her burial sod
As the cell of sepulchral sleep:
It shall be as the shrine of a radiant god,
And the pilgrim shall visit this blest abode
To worship, and not to weep.
And as he turns his steps aside,
Thus shall he breathe his vow:—
Here slept a self-devoted bride;
Of old, to save her lord she died,
She is an angel now.
ON A YOUNG BRIDE.
Not Hymen,—it was Ades’ self alone
That loosened Clearista’s virgin zone:
The morning ’spousal song was raised,—but oh!
At once ’twas silenced into threnes of woe;
And the same torches which the bridal bed
Had lit, now showed the pathway to the dead.
ON A BACHELOR.
At threescore winters’ end I died,
A cheerless being, sole and sad;
The nuptial knot I never tied,
And wish my father never had.
My name, my country, what are they to thee?
What, whether base or proud my pedigree?
Perhaps I far surpassed all other men;
Perhaps I fell below them all,—what then?
Suffice it, stranger, that thou seest a tomb;
Thou know’st its use,—it hides,—no matter whom.