But it is not often that we hear in the Greek Anthology a strain of such pure and Christian music as this apocryphal epitaph on Prote:
οὐκ ἔθανες, Πρώτη, μετέβης δ' ἐς ἀμείνονα χῶρον,
καὶ ναίεις μακάρων νήσους θαλίῃ ἐνὶ πολλῇ,
ἔνθα κατ' Ἠλυσίων πεδίων σκιρτῶσα γέγηθας
ἄνθεσιν ἐν μαλακοῖσι, κακῶν ἔκτοσθεν ἁπάντων·
οὐ χειμὼν λυπεῖ σ', οὐ καῦμ', οὐ νοῦσος ἐνοχλεῖ,
οὐ πεινῇς, οὐ δίψος ἔχει σ'· ἀλλ' οὐδὲ ποθεινὸς
ἀνθρώπων ἔτι σοι βίοτος· ζώεις γὰρ ἀμέμπτως
αὐγαῖς ἐν καθαραῖσιν Ὀλύμπου πλήσιον ὄντος.[176]
Death at sea touched the Greek imagination with peculiar vividness. That a human body should toss, unburied, unhonored, on the waves, seemed to them the last indignity. Therefore the epitaphs on Satyrus (i. 348), who exclaims,
κείνῳ δινήεντι καὶ ἀτρυγέτῳ ἔτι κεῖμαι
ὕδατι μαινομένῳ μεμφόμενος Βορέῃ,
and on Lysidike (i. 328), of whom Zenocritus writes,
χαῖταί σου στάζουσιν ἔθ' ἁλμυρὰ δύσμορε κούρη
ναυηγὲ φθιμένης εἰν ἁλὶ Λυσιδίκη,
and on the three athletes who perished by shipwreck (i. 342), have a mournful wail of their own. Not very different, too, is the pathos of Therimachus struck by lightning (i. 306):
αὐτόμαται δείλῃ ποτὶ ταὔλιον αἱ βόες ἦλθον
ἐξ ὄρεος πολλῇ νιφόμεναι χιόνι·
αἰαῖ, Θηρίμαχος δὲ παρὰ δρυῒ τὸν μακρὸν εὕδει
ὕπνον· ἐκοιμήθη δ' ἐκ πυρὸς οὐρανίου.[177]
It is pleasant to turn from these to epitaphs which dwell more upon the qualities of the dead than the circumstances of their death. Here is the epitaph of a slave (i. 379):
Ζωσίμη ἡ πρὶν ἐοῦσα μόνῳ τῷ σώματι δούλη
καὶ τῷ σώματι νῦν εὗρεν ἐλευθερίην.[178]