We are here clearly in the region of elegant trifles: and being there we may give a few more specimens of the poetic art which, like the acanthus, gave an elegant finish to the tomb. The following is Meleager’s lament over Heliodora[286]:—
To Hades, Heliodora, from above,
I send these tears, the relics of my love,
Tears hard to weep; and on thy tomb I pour
This memory of loving days of yore.
O bitter, bitter, darling, is my woe
A bootless gift for Acheron below.
Where is my flower? By Hades snatched away,
The budding blossom is but dust to-day.
Grant, Mother Earth, that one so dear as she
May softly in thy arms enfolded be.
The next epitaph, by Philip of Thessalonica, is quite Hellenistic in character[287]:—
Architeles the Sculptor, where was laid
His son, with mournful hand the tombstone made.
Not cut with iron tool the lines appear;
The stone was furrowed by the frequent tear.
O stone! lie lightly, that the dead may know
A hand indeed paternal set thee so.
I cite only the end of another epitaph, by Heracleitus, which is said to have adorned the tomb of a lady named Aretemias[288]. It is so neat and compressed that I have in vain tried to render it in an English heroic distich:—‘Twin sons I bare: one I left to my husband as a stay of old age; one I take with me as a memorial of my husband.’
We may add a couple more epitaphs which clearly belong to the epideictic or rhetorical class, but which please by the neatness of their form. One by Damagetes[289] professes to record the last words of a lady named Theano, of Phocaea, in Asia Minor.
Phocaeans! hear the moan Theano made,
As night received her with eternal shade.
‘How sad my lot! Afar some unknown sea
In thy swift ship, my husband, beareth thee.
Fate stands beside my bed. Ah! wert thou by,
Holding thy loving hand that I might die.’
The following professes to belong to a tomb of Ajax[290], on which was placed a mourning woman, who represented his unappreciated worth or valour:—
On Ajax’ tomb with closely shaven hair
I sit, sad Worth, in semblance of despair,
Grief-struck at heart that with the Achaean host
Deceitful Fraud more weight than I can boast.