The dust of Timas: ere her bridal she
Saw the dark chamber of Persephone.
Their lovely hair her playmates offered here,
Cut off to honour her who was so dear.
This seems of archaic simplicity compared with the metrical epitaph on Clearista by Meleager, already cited in Chapter VIII. Nothing could well be simpler also than the following by Callimachus[282], whose art in this case conceals art:—
Saon the son of Dicon here doth lie
In holy sleep: the good can never die.
A charming epitaph[283] on one Amyntichus, being anonymous, is probably from a real tomb:—
Dear earth, receive Amyntichus to rest,
Mindful of all his labour spent on thee;
Thee with the boughs of Bacchus oft he dressed,
And in thee planted oft the olive-tree,
Filled thee with Deo’s grain, and trenches led
To make thee rich in herbs and autumn fruits.
Lie thou then lightly on his hoary head,
And busk his tomb with springtide’s tender shoots.
An epitaph, by Leonidas[284] of Tarentum, on one Clitagoras, refers to offerings at the tomb, such as we have spoken of in Chapter II:—
Shepherds, who tend upon yon mountain steep
Your herds of goats and flocks of fleecy sheep,
A little gift Clitagoras to-day
For sake of Queen Persephone doth pray;
I would that sheep should bleat, and from a rock
A shepherd pipe soft music to his flock;
And let one hind cull fresh young meadow-bloom
In early spring, and crown therewith my tomb;
Another take and milk a mother ewe
And with the stream this funeral stone bedew;
The dead are reached by kindly acts of men,
And e’en the dead can make return again.
This is a pastoral picture well worthy of Theocritus; the last two lines show how persistently there lingered among the Greek peasants that notion of the exchange of services between dead and living of which I have spoken above.
Sometimes not only human beings but also favourite animals had their tombs and epitaphs. Especially, we are told, was this the case at Agrigentum in Sicily, a city which paid dearly for its luxury and effeminacy at the time of the Carthaginian invasion of the end of the fifth century. The following[285], by Meleager, was for a hare:—
A long-eared hare was I and swift of feet,
When Phaenium stole me from my mother’s breast.
She gave me young spring flowers to be my meat,
And in her bosom oft I lay caressed.
True mother she! but death soon came to me,
Good living made me fat and overfed.
Here lie I ’neath her chamber floor, that she
In dreams may see my tomb beside her bed.