In each of these epitaphs the untimely fading of a flower-like maiden in her prime has roused the deepest feeling of the poetess. This, indeed, is the chord which rings most truly in the sepulchral lyre of the Greeks. Their most genuine sorrow is for youth cut off before the joys of life were tasted. This sentiment receives, perhaps, its most pathetic though least artistic expression in the following anonymous epitaph on a young man. The mother's love and anguish are set forth with a vividness which we should scarcely have expected from a Greek (i. 336):
νηλεὲς ὦ δαῖμον, τί δέ μοι καὶ φέγγος ἔδειξας
εἰς ὀλίγων ἐτέων μέτρα μινυνθάδια;
ἢ ἵνα λυπήσῃς δι' ἐμὴν βιότοιο τελευτὴν
μητέρα δειλαίην δάκρυσι καὶ στοναχαῖς,
ἥ μ' ἔτεχ' ἥ μ' ἀτίτηλε καὶ ἣ πολὺ μείζονα πατρὸς
φροντίδα παιδείης ἤνυσεν ἡμετέρης;
ὃς μὲν γὰρ τυτθόν τε καὶ ὀρφανὸν ἐν μεγάροισι
κάλλιπεν· ἡ δ' ἐπ' ἐμοὶ πάντας ἔτλη καμάτους.
ἦ μὲν ἐμοὶ φίλον ἦεν ἐφ' ἁγνῶν ἡγεμονήων
ἐμπρεπέμεν μύθοις ἀμφὶ δικασπολίας·
ἀλλά μοι οὐ γενύων ἐπεδέξατο κούριμον ἄνθος
ἡλικίης ἐρατῆς, οὐ γάμον, οὐ δαΐδας·
οὐχ ὑμέναιον ἄεισε περικλυτὸν, οὐ τέκος εἶδε,
δύσποτμος, ἐκ γενεῆς λείψανον ἡμετέρης,
τῆς πολυθρηνήτου· λυπεῖ δέ με καὶ τεθνεῶτα
μητρὸς Πωλίττης πένθος ἀεξόμενον,
Φρόντωνος γοεραῖς ἐπὶ φροντίσιν, ἣ τέκε παῖδα
ὠκύμορον, κενεὸν χάρμα φίλης πατρίδος.[175]
The common topic of consolation in these cases of untimely death is the one which Shakespeare has expressed in the dirge for Fidele, and D'Urfey in his dirge for Chrysostom by these four lines:
Whilst we that pine in life's disease,
Uncertain-blessed, less happy are.
Lucian, speaking of a little boy who died at five years of age (i. 332), makes him cry:
ἀλλά με μὴ κλαίοις· καὶ γὰρ βιότοιο μετέσχον
παύρου καὶ παύρων τῶν βιότοιο κακῶν.
A little girl in another epitaph (i. 366) says to her father:
ἴσχεο λύπας,
Θειόδοτε· θνατοὶ πολλάκι δυστυχέες.
A young man, dying in the prime of life, is even envied by Agathias (i. 384):
ἔμπης ὄλβιος οὗτος, ὃς ἐν νεότητι μαρανθεὶς
ἔκφυγε τὴν βιότου θᾶσσον ἀλιτροσύνην.