Here lies the body of John Eldred,
At least he will be here when he is dead;
But now at this time he is alive,
The 14th of August ’sixty-five.
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,