Here is an epitaph. Upon whom? Euripides. By whom. Thucydides. Read it. It is instructive. The subject and the author are dead; but each sleeps under a stately tomb. Their works are their mausolea. But the idea—is it not affecting? Twenty-three centuries agone, a great historian weeping over the grave of a splendid poet!
Greece is thy tomb; but Sparta holds thy clay,
For there thy life beheld its latest day.
Athens—the Greece of Greece—first gave thee breath,
Dear to the muses, and renowned in death.
An epitaph, which Hippo ordered to be placed on his monument.
Lo! Hippo’s tomb, whom Fate, by death, has made
Peer to the gods in their immortal shade.
By Rufinus, to Melite—Anglicè, Fanny—a very pretty girl.
Lumina habes Junonia pulchra, manusque Minervae,
Pectora (proh!) Veneris, atque pedes Thetidos.
Felix, qui viderit, qui te audieritque, beatus:
Semideus tui amans, omnideus tui vir.
The word omnideus I claim as my own. I made it myself. Noli tangere.
Thy face is brightened by fair Juno’s eyes,
And Pallas lends thee her immortal hand;
Thy breasts, like those of Paphian Venus, rise;
Thy feet, like Thetis’, trip across the sand.
Ah! happy he, that gazes on thy face,
And he twice-bless’d, that listens to thy voice;
Thy lover, sure, is of angelic race,
And—a bright god—thy husband may rejoice.
An address to Mammon, by Timocrates, the Rhodian.
Vellem, vellem, caece Plute,
Nec in terra, nec in alto,
Tua forma cerneretur.
Tartarum autem inhabitare,
Acheronta teque oportet.
Ex te namque prava nobis
Enasci omnia videntur.