Let us drink an unmixed draught of wine; dawn is an hand-breadth; are we waiting to see the bed-time lamp once again? Let us drink merrily; after no long time yet, O luckless one, we shall sleep through the long night.
XII OUTRE-TOMBE JULIANUS AEGYPTUS
Often I sang this, and even out of the grave will I cry it: "Drink, before you put on this raiment of dust."
XIII EARTH TO EARTH ZONAS
Give me the sweet cup wrought of the earth from which I was born, and under which I shall lie dead.
XIV THE COFFIN-MAKER AUTHOR UNKNOWN
I would have liked to be rich as Croesus of old was rich, and to be king of great Asia; but when I look on Nicanor the coffin-maker, and know for what he is making these flute-cases of his, sprinkling my flour and wetting it with my jug of wine, I sell all Asia for ointments and garlands.
XV RETURNING SPRING PHILODEMUS
Now is rose-time and peas are in season, and the heads of early cabbage, O Sosylus, and the milky maena, and fresh-curdled cheese, and the soft-springing leaves of curled lettuces; and do we neither pace the foreland nor climb to the outlook, as always, O Sosylus, we did before? for Antagoras and Bacchius too frolicked yesterday, and now to-day we bear them forth for burial.