O relentless Fortune, who delightest in cruel death,
Why is Maximus so suddenly snatched from me?
He who lately used to be joyful in my bosom,
This stone now marks his tomb.—Behold his mother.
Compare also the following: INVIDA LIBITINA FILIIS ABSTVLIT PATREM—“Envious Libitina snatched away a father from his children;” VICTA EST IVSTICIA NON AEQVO IVDICE FATO—“Justice is overcome by that unjust judge, Fate;” DIIS INIQVIS ANIMVLAM TVAM RAPVERVNT—“To the unjust gods, (who) snatched away thy soul.”
But the holy teachings of Christianity revealed to the weary and heavy laden souls of men, aching with a sense of orphanage, the loving Fatherhood of God,[718] and produced a spirit of meekness and resignation altogether foreign to the pagan mind. Of pathetic interest, as illustrating this fact, is a Christian fragment of date circ. A. D. 600, on which we may still read the inscription
QVI · DEDIT · ET · ABSTVLIT
.... OMINI · BENEDIC ....
The familiar words suggest the imperishable thought, which has been a source of consolation to bereaved ones in every age. “Like a voice from among the graves,” says Dr. Maitland, “broken by sobs, yet distinctly intelligible, fall these words on the listening ear, ‘who gave, and hath taken away—blessed [be the name] of the Lord.’”
We occasionally find pagan inscriptions breathing a sense of spiritual existence and hope of future life.[719] The yearning of the human heart that
Longs for the touch of a vanished hand
And the sound of a voice that is still,
and the hunger of the soul for communion with the dear departed in the loving tryst of the silent land are pathetically expressed in the following prayer of Furia Spes: PETO VOS MANES SANCTISSIMAE (sic) ... MEVM CONIVGEM HORIS NOCTVRNIS VT VIDEAM ET ETIAM VT EGO DVLCIVS ET CELERIVS APVD EVM PERVENIRE POSSIM—“I beseech you, most holy spirits, that I may behold my husband in the midnight hours; and also that I may more sweetly and swiftly go to him.”
More common, however, is the feeling of hopeless severance expressed by the frequent valediction, VALE VALE LONGVM VALE—“Farewell, farewell, a long farewell;” or, sadder still, VALE AETERNVM—“Farewell forever.”