§ 7.1  BOOK VII, SEPULCHRAL EPIGRAMS
ALCAEUS OF MESSENE On Homer
In Ios the boys, weaving a riddle at the bidding of the Muses, vexed to death Homer the singer of the heroes. And the Nereids of the sea anointed him with nectar and laid him dead under the rock on the shore; because he glorified Thetis and her son and the battle-din of the other heroes and the deeds of Odysseus of Ithaca. Blessed among the islands in the sea is Ios, for small though she be, she covers the star of the Muses and Graces.
O STRANGER, it is granted to me, this island rock of Ios, to hold Maeonides, the Persuader of men, the mighty-voiced, who sang even as the Muses. For in no other island but in me did he leave, when he died, the holy breath with which he told of the almighty nod of Zeus, and of Olympus, and of the strength of Ajax fighting for the ships, and of Hector his flesh stripped from his bones by the Thessalian horses of Achilles that dragged him over the plain of Troy. If thou marvellest that I who am so small cover so great a man, know that the spouse of Thetis likewise lies in Ikos that hath but a few clods of earth.

§ 7.2  Anonymous on the same
Wayfarer, though the tomb be small, pass me not by, but pour on me a libation, and venerate me as thou dost the gods. For I hold divine Homer the poet of the epic, honoured exceedingly by the Pierian Muses.

§ 7.3  ANONYMOUS on the same
Here the earth covereth the sacred man, divine Homer, the marshaller of the heroes.

§ 7.4  PAULUS SILENTIARIUS on the same
Here the famous tomb on the rock by the sea holdeth divine Homer, the skilled mouth by which the Muses spoke. Wonder not, O stranger, as thou lookest, if so little an island can contain so great a man. For my sister Delos, while she wandered yet on the waves, received Apollo from his mother’s womb.

§ 7.5  UNCERTAIN, BY SOME ATTRIBUTED TO ALCAEUS, on the same
No, not even if ye set me, Homer, up all of beaten gold in the burning lightning of Zeus, I am not and will not be a Salaminian, I the son of Meles will not be the son of Dmesagoras; let not Greece look on that. Tempt some other poet, but it is thou, Chios, who with the Muses shalt sing my verses to the sons of Hellas.

§ 7.6  ANTIPATER OF SIDON on the same
O stranger, the sea-beat earth covers Homer, the herald of the heroes’ valour, the spokesman of the gods, a second sun to the life of the Greeks, the light of the Muses, the mouth that groweth not old of the whole world.

§ 7.7  ANONYMOUS on the same
Here is divine Homer, who sang of all Hellas, born in Thebes of the hundred gates.

§ 7.8  ANTIPATER OF SIDON On the poet Orpheus, son of Oeagrus and Calliope
No more, Orpheus, shalt thou lead the charmed oaks and rocks and the shepherdless herds of wild beasts. No more shalt thou lull to sleep the howling winds and the hail, and the drifting snow, and the roaring sea. For dead thou art; and the daughters of Mnemosyne bewailed thee much, and before all thy mother Calliope. Why sigh we for our dead sons, when not even the gods have power to protect their children from death?

§ 7.9  DAMAGETUS on the same
The tomb on the Thracian skirts of Olympus holds Orpheus, son of the Muse Calliope; whom the trees disobeyed not and the lifeless rocks followed, and the herds of the forest beasts; who discovered the mystic rites of Bacchus, and first linked verse in heroic feet; who charmed with his lyre even the heavy sense of the implacable Lord of Hell, and his unyielding wrath.

§ 7.10  ANONYMOUS on the same
The fair-haired daughters of Bistonia shed a thousand tears for Orpheus dead, the son of Calliope and Oeagrus; they stained their tattooed arms with blood, and dyed their Thracian locks with black ashes. The very Muses of Pieria, with Apollo, the master of the lute, burst into tears mourning for the singer, and the rocks moaned, and the trees, that erst he charmed with his lovely lyre.

§ 7.11  ASCLEPIADES
On Erinna (inscribed on a Volume of her Poems)
This is the sweet work of Erinna, not great indeed in volume, as being that of a maiden of nineteen, but greater in power than that of many others. If Death had not come early to me, who would have had such a name?

§ 7.12  ANONYMOUS on the same
Just as thou wast giving birth to the spring of thy honeyed hymns, and beginning to sing with thy swan-like voice, Fate, mistress of the distaff that spins the thread, bore thee over the wide lake of the dead to Acheron. But the beautiful work, Erinna, of thy verse cries aloud that thou art not dead, but joinest in the dance of the Muses.

§ 7.13  LEONIDAS OR MELEAGER on the same
As Erinna, the maiden honey-bee, the new singer in the poets’ quire, was gathering the flowers of the Muses, Hades carried her off to wed her. That was a true word, indeed, the girl spoke when she lived: "Hades, thou art an envious god."

§ 7.14  ANTIPATER OF SIDON On Sappho
O Aeolian land, thou coverest Sappho, who with the immortal Muses is celebrated as the mortal Muse; whom Cypris and Eros together reared, with whom Peitho wove the undying wreath of song, a joy to Hellas and a glory to thee. O ye Fates twirling the triple thread on the spindle, why spun ye not an everlasting life for the singer who devised the deathless gifts of the Muses of Helicon?

§ 7.15  ANTIPATER on the same
My name is Sappho, and I excelled all women in song as much as Maeonides excelled men.

§ 7.16  PINYTUS on the same
The tomb holds the bones and the dumb name of Sappho, but her skilled words are immortal.

§ 7.17  TULLIUS LAUREAS on the same
When thou passest, O stranger, by the Aeolian tomb, say not that I, the Lesbian poetess, am dead. This tomb was built by the hands of men, and such works of mortals are lost in swift oblivion. But if thou enquirest about me for the sake of the Muses, from each of whom I took a flower to lay beside my nine flowers of song, thou shalt find that I escaped the darkness of death, and that no sun shall dawn and set without memory of lyric Sappho.

§ 7.18  ANTIPATER OF THESSALONICA On Alcman
Do not judge the man by the stone. Simple is the tomb to look on, but holds the bones of a great man. Thou shalt know Alcman the supreme striker of the Laconian lyre, possessed by the nine Muses. Here resteth he, a cause of dispute to two continents, if He be a Lydian or a Spartan. Minstrels have many mothers.

§ 7.19  LEONIDAS (OF ALEXANDRIA?)
on the same
Alcman the graceful, the swan-singer of wedding hymns, who made music worthy of the Muses, lieth in this tomb, a great ornament to Sparta, or perhaps at the last he threw off his burden and went to Hades.

§ 7.20  ANONYMOUS On Sophocles
Thy light is out, aged Sophocles, flower of poets, crowned with the purple clusters of Bacchus.

§ 7.21  SIMIAS on the same
O SOPHOCLES, son of Sophillus, singer of choral odes, Attic star of the tragic Muse, whose locks the curving ivy of Acharnae often crowned in the orchestra and on the stage, a tomb and a little portion of earth hold thee; but thy exquisite life shines yet in thy immortal pages.

§ 7.22  SIMIAS on the same
Gently over the tomb of Sophocles, gently creep, O ivy, flinging forth thy green curls, and all about let the petals of the rose bloom, and the vine that loves her fruit shed her pliant tendrils around, for the sake of that wise-hearted beauty of diction that the Muses and Graces in common bestowed on the sweet singer.

§ 7.23  ANTIPATER OF SIDON
On Anacreon
Let the four-clustered ivy, Anacreon, flourish around thee, and the tender flowers of the purple meadows, and let fountains of white milk bubble up, and sweet-smelling wine gush from the earth, so that thy ashes and bones may have joy, if indeed any delight toucheth the dead.

§ 7.23b  ANONYMOUS on the same
O beloved who didst love the clear lute, O thou who didst sail through thy whole life with song and with love.

§ 7.24  SIMONIDES (?) on the same
O vine who soothest all, nurse of wine, mother of the grape, thou who dost put forth thy web of curling tendrils, flourish green in the fine soil and climb up the pillar of the grave of Teian Anacreon; that he, the reveller heavy with wine, playing all through the night on his lad-loving lyre, may even as he lies low in earth have the glorious ripe clusters hanging from the branches over his head, and that he may be ever steeped in the dew that scented the old man's tender lips so sweetly.

§ 7.25  SIMONIDES (?) on the same
In this tomb of Teos, his home, was Anacreon laid, the singer whom the Muses made deathless, who
set to the sweet love of lads measures breathing of the Graces, breathing of Love. Alone in Acheron he grieves not that he has left the sun and dwelleth there in the house of Lethe, but that he has left Megisteus, graceful above all the youth, and his passion for Thracian Smerdies. Yet never doth he desist from song delightful as honey, and even in Hades he hath not laid that lute to rest.

§ 7.26  ANTIPATER OF SIDON on the same
Stranger who passest by the simple tomb of Anacreon, if any profit came to thee from my books, pour on my ashes, pour some drops, that my bones may rejoice refreshed with wine, that I who delighted in the loud-voiced revels of Dionysus, I who dwelt amid such music as loveth wine, even in death may not suffer without Bacchus my sojourn in this land to which all the sons of men must come.

§ 7.27  By the same on the same
Anacreon, glory of Ionia, mayest thou among the dead be not without thy beloved revels, or without thy lyre, and still mayest thou sing with swimming eyes, shaking the entwined flowers that rest on thy essenced hair, turned towards Eurypyle, or Megisteus, or the locks of Thracian Smerdies, spouting sweet wine, thy robe drenched with the juice of the grape, wringing untempered nectar from its folds. For all thy life, O old man, was poured out as an offering to these three, the Muses, Bacchus, and Love.

§ 7.28  ANONYMOUS on the same
O stranger, who passest this tomb of Anacreon, pour a libation to me in going by, for I am a wine bibber.

§ 7.29  ANTIPATER OF SIDON on the same
Thou sleepest among the dead, Anacreon, thy good day's labour done; thy sweet lyre that talked all through the night sleepeth too. And Smerdies sleeps, the spring-tide of the Loves, to whom, striking the lyre, thou madest music like unto nectar. For thou wast the target of Love, the Love of lads, and to shoot thee alone he had a bow and subtle archer craft.

§ 7.30  By the same on the same
This is Anacreon’s tomb; here sleeps the Teian swan and the untempered madness of his passion for lads. Still singeth he some song of longing to the lyre about Bathyllus, and the white marble is perfumed with ivy. Not even death has quenched thy loves, and in the house of Acheron thou sufferest all through thee the pangs of the fever of Cypris.

§ 7.31  DIOSCORIDES on the same
O Anacreon, delight of the Muses, lord of all revels of the night, thou who wast melted to the marrow of thy bones for Thracian Smerdies, O thou who often bending o’er the cup didst shed warm tears for Bathyllus, may founts of wine bubble up for thee unbidden, and streams of ambrosial nectar from the gods; unbidden may the gardens bring thee violets, the flowers that love the evening, and myrtles grow for thee nourished by tender dew, so that even in the house of Demeter thou mayest dance delicately in thy cups, holding golden Eurypyle in thy arms.

§ 7.32  JULIANUS, PREFECT OF EGYPT on the same
Often I sung this, and I will cry it from the tomb, "Drink ere ye put on this garment of the dust."

§ 7.33  By the same on the same
A. "You died of drinking too much, Anacreon." B. "Yes, but I enjoyed it, and you who do not drink will come to Hades too."

§ 7.34  ANTIPATER OF SIDON On Pindar
This earth holds Pindar, the Pierian trumpet, the heavily smiting smith of well-outlined hymns, whose melody when thou hearest thou wouldst exclaim that a swarm of bees from the Muses fashioned it in the bridal chamber of Cadmus.

§ 7.35  LEONIDAS on the same
Congenial to strangers and dear to his countrymen was this man, Pindar, the servant of the sweet-voiced Muses.
It

§ 7.36  ERYCIAS On Sophocles
Ever, O divine Sophocles, may the ivy that adorns the stage dance with soft feet over thy polished monument. Ever may the tomb be encompassed by bees that bedew it, the children of the ox, and drip with honey of Hymettus, that there be ever store of wax flowing for thee to spread on thy Attic writing tablets, and that thy locks may never want a wreath.

§ 7.37  DIOSCORIDES on the same (A statue of a Satyr is supposed to speak)
A. "THIS is the tomb of Sophocles which I, his holy servant, received from the Muses as a holy trust to guard. It was he who, taking me from Phlius where I was carved of holly-oak and still trod the tribulum, wrought me into a creature of gold and clothed me in fine purple. On his death I ceased from the dance and rested my light foot here".
B. Blessed art thou, how excellent thy post! And the mask of a girl in thy hand with shaven hair as of a mourner, from what play is she?" A. "Say Antigone if thou wilt, or say Electra; in either case thou art not wrong, for both are supreme."

§ 7.38  DIODORUS On Aristophanes
Divine Aristophanes lies dead beneath me. If thou askest which, it is the comic poet who keeps the memory of the old stage alive.

§ 7.39  ANTIPATER OF THESSALONICA On Aeschylus
Here, far from the Attic land, making Sicily glorious by his tomb, lies Aeschylus, son of Euphorion, who first built high with massive eloquence the diction of tragedy and its beetling song.

§ 7.40  DIODORUS on the same
This tombstone says that Aeschylus the great lies here, far from his own Attica, by the white waters of Sicilian Gelas. What spiteful grudge against the good is this, alas, that ever besets the sons of Theseus?

§ 7.41  ANONYMOUS On Callimachus
Hail blessed one, even in the house of Hades, Callimachus, dearest companion of the divine Muses.

§ 7.42  ANONYMOUS On the Aetia (Origins) of the same
Ah! great and renowned dream of the skilled son of Battus, verily thou wast of horn, not of ivory; for thou didst reveal things to us touching the gods and demigods which never man knew before, then when catching him up thou didst bear him from Libya to Helicon, and didst set him down in the midst of the Muses. And there as he wove the Origins of primeval heroes they in turn wove for him the Origins also of the gods.

§ 7.43  ION On Euripides
Hail, Euripides, dwelling in the chamber of eternal night in the dark-robed valleys of Pieria! Know, though thou art under earth, that thy renown shall be everlasting, equal to the perennial charm of Homer.

§ 7.44  By the same on the same
Though a tearful fate befel thee, O Euripides, devoured by wolf-hounds, thou, the honey-voiced nightingale of the stage, the ornament of Athens, who didst mingle the grace of the Muses with wisdom, yet thou wast laid in the tomb at Pella, that the servant of the Pierian Muses should dwell near the home of his mistresses.
Callimachus claimed that the Muses revealed the matter of the poem to him in a dream.

§ 7.45  THUCYDIDES THE HISTORIAN on the same
All Hellas is the monument of Euripides, but the Macedonian land holds his bones, for it sheltered the end of his life. His country was Athens, the Hellas of Hellas, and as by his verse he gave exceeding delight, so from many he receiveth praise.

§ 7.46  ANONYMOUS on the same
This is not thy monument, Euripides, but thou art the memorial of it, for by thy gloty is this monument encompassed.

§ 7.47  ANONYMOUS on the same
All Greece is thy tomb, O Euripides; so thou art not dumb, but even vocal.

§ 7.48  ANONYMOUS on the same
Thy delicate flesh encompassed by the blast of glowing fire yielded up its moisture and burnt away. In the much-wept tomb is naught but dumb bones, arid sorrow for the wayfarers who pass this way.

§ 7.49  BIANOR OF BITHYNIA on the same
Thb Macedonian dust of the tomb covers thee, Euripides, but ere thou didst put on this cloak of earth thou wast scorched by the bolts of Zeus. For thrice the heaven lightened at his word and purified thy mortal frame.

§ 7.50  ARCHIMEDES on the same
Tread not, O poet, the path of Euripides, neither essay it, for it is hard for man to walk therein. Smooth it is to look on, and well beaten, but if one sets his foot on it, it is rougher than if set with cruel stakes. Scratch but the surface of Medea} Aeetes' daughter, and thou shalt lie below forgotten. Hands off his crowns.

§ 7.51  ADAEUS On the same
Neither dogs slew thee, Euripides, nor the rage of women, thou enemy of the secrets of Cypris, but Death and old age, and under Macedonian Arethusa thou liest, honoured by the friendship of Archelaus. Yet it is not this that I account thy tomb, but the altar of Bacchus and the buskin-trodden stage.

§ 7.52  DEMIURGUS On Hesiod
I hold Hesiod of Ascra the glory of spacious Hellas and the ornament of Poesy.

§ 7.53  ANONYMOUS On an ex-voto dedicated by Hesiod
Hesiod dedicated this to the Heliconian Muses, having conquered divine Homer in the hymn contest at Chalcis.

§ 7.54  MNASALCAS on the same
Ascra, the land of broad corn-fields, was my country, but the land of the charioteer Minyae holds my bones now I am dead. I am Hesiod, the most glorious in the eyes of the world of men who are judged by the test of wisdom.

§ 7.55  ALCAEUS (OF MYTILENE OR MESSENE) on the same
In a shady grove of Locris the Nymphs washed the body of Hesiod with water from their springs and raised a tomb to him. And on it the goat-herds poured libations of milk mixed with golden honey. For even such was the song the old man breathed who had tasted the pure fountains of the nine Muses.

§ 7.56  ANONYMOUS On Democritus of Abdera
So this was the cause of Democritus’ laughter, and perchance he will say, "Did I not say, laughing, that all is laughter? For even I, after my limitless wisdom and the long series of my works, lie beneath the tomb a laughing-stock."

§ 7.57  DIOGENES LAERTIUS
on the same
Who was ever so wise, who wrought such a deed as omniscient Democritus, who had Death for three days in his house and entertained him with the hot steam of bread?

§ 7.58  JULIANUS, PREFECT OF EGYPT on the same
Though, Persephone, thou rulest over the unsmiling dead beneath the earth, receive the shade of Democritus with his kindly laugh; for only laughter turned away from sorrow thy mother when she was sore-hearted for thy loss.

§ 7.59  By the same on the same
Receive Democritus, O blessed Pluto, so that thou, the ruler of the laughterless people, mayest have one subject who laughs.

§ 7.60  SIMIAS On Plato
Here lieth the divine Aristocles, who excelled all mortals in temperance and the ways of justice. If any one gained from all men much praise for wisdom it was he, and no envy therewith.

§ 7.61  ANONYMOUS on the same
The earth in her bosom hides here the body of Plato, but his soul has its immortal station among the
blest, the soul of Ariston’s son, whom every good man, even if he dwell in a far land, honours in that he saw the divine life.

§ 7.62  ANONYMOUS on the same
A. "EAGLE, why standest thou on the tomb, and on whose, tell me, and why gazest thou at the starry home of the gods?" B. "I am the image of the soul of Plato that hath flown away to Olympus, but his earth-born body rests here in Attic earth."

§ 7.63  ANONYMOUS On Diogenes
O FERRYMAN of the dead, receive the Dog Diogenes, who laid bare the whole pretentiousness of life.

§ 7.64  ANONYMOUS on the same
A. "TELL me, dog, who was the man on whose tomb thou standest keeping guard?" B. "The Dog." A. "But what man was that, the Dog?"
B. "Diogenes." A. "Of what country?" B. "Of Sinope." A. "He who lived in a jar?" B. "Yes, and now he is dead, the stars are his home."

§ 7.66  ANTIPATER on the same
This is the tomb of Diogenes, the wise Dog who of old, with manly spirit, endured a life of self-denial.
One wallet he carried with him, one cloak, one staff, the weapons of self-sufficient sobriety. But turn aside from this tomb, all ye fools; for he of Sinope, even in Hades, hates every mean man.

§ 7.66  HONESTUS on the same
The staff, and wallet, and thick cloak, were the very light burden of wise Diogenes in life. I bring all to the ferryman, for I left nothing on earth. But you, Cerberus dog, fawn on me, the Dog.

§ 7.67  LEONIDAS on the same
Mournful minister of Hades, who dost traverse in thy dark boat this water of Acheron, receive me, Diogenes the Dog, even though thy gruesome bark is overloaded with spirits of the dead. My luggage is but a flask, and a wallet, and my old cloak, and the obol that pays the passage of the departed. All that was mine in life I bring with me to Hades, and have left nothing beneath the sun.

§ 7.68  ARCHIAS on the same
O boatman of Hades, conveyor of the dead, delighting in the tears of all, who dost ply the ferry o’er this deep water of Acheron, though thy boat be heavy beneath its load of shades, leave me not behind, Diogenes the Dog. I have with me but a flask, and a staff, and a cloak, and a wallet, and the obol thy fare. These things that 1 carry with me now 1 am dead are all I had when alive, and I left nothing in the daylight.

§ 7.69  JULIANUS, PREFECT OF EGYPT On Archilochus
Cerberus, whose bark strikes terror into the dead, there comes a terrible shade before whom even thou must tremble. Archilochus is dead. Beware the acrid iambic wrath engendered by his bitter mouth. Thou knowest the might of his words ever since one boat brought thee the two daughters of Lycambes.

§ 7.70  By the same on the same
Now, three-headed dog, better than ever with thy sleepless eyes guard the gate of thy fortress, the pit. For if the daughters of Lycambes to avoid the savage bile of Archilochus’ iambics left the light, will not every soul leave the portals of this dusky dwelling, flying from the terror of his slanderous tongue?

§ 7.71  GAETULICUS on the same
This tomb by the sea is that of Archilochus, who first made the Muse bitter dipping her in vipers’ gall, staining mild Helicon with blood. Lycambes knows it, mourning for his three daughters hanged. Pass quietly by, O way-farer, lest haply thou arouse the wasps that are settled on his tomb.

§ 7.72  MENANDER On Epicurus and Themistoclcs
Hail, ye twin-born sons of Neocles, of whom the one saved his country from slavery the other from folly.

§ 7.73  GEMINUS
On Themistocles
In place of a simple tomb put Hellas, and on her put ships significant of the destroyed barbaric fleets, and round the frieze of the tomb paint the Persian host and Xerxes; thus bury Themistocles. And Salamis shall stand thereon, a pillar telling of my deeds. Why lay you so great a man in a little space?

§ 7.74  DIODORUS on the same
The people of Magnesia raised to Themistocles this monument in a land not his own, when after saving his country from the Medes, he was laid in foreign earth under a foreign stone. Verily Envy so willed, and deeds of valour have less privilege than she.

§ 7.75  ANTIPATER (OF SIDON?)
On Stesichorus
Stesichorus, the vast immeasurable voice of the Muse, was buried in Catana’s fiery land, he in whose breast, as telleth the philosopher Pythagoras, Homer’s soul lodged again.

§ 7.76  DIOSCORIDES
Philocritus, his trading over and yet a novice at the plough, lay buried at Memphis in a foreign land. And there the Nile running in high flood stripped him of the scanty earth that covered him. So in his life he escaped from the salt sea, but now covered by the waves hath, poor wretch, a shipwrecked mariner’s tomb.

§ 7.77  SIMONIDES On Simonides (?)
The saviour of the Ceian Simonides is this man, who even in death requited him who lived.

§ 7.78  DIONYSIUS OF CYZICUS On Eratosthenes
A mild old age, no darkening disease, put out thy light, Eratosthenes son of Aglaus, and, thy high studies over, thou sleepest the appointed sleep. Cyrene thy mother did not receive thee into the
written by Simonides on the tomb of a man whose corpse he found on the shore and buried, and whose ghost appeared and forbade him to sail in a ship which was wrecked on her voyage.
tombs of thy fathers, but thou art buried on this fringe of Proteus’ shore, beloved even in a strange land.

§ 7.79  MELEAGER On Heraclitus of Ephesus
A. "Sir, I am Heraclitus, and assert that I alone discovered wisdom, and my services to my country were better than wisdom. Ay Sir; for I assailed even my own parents, evil-minded folks, with contumely." B. "A fine return for thy bringing up!" A. "Be off!" B. "Tanais’t be rough." A. "Because you may soon hear something rougher than my people heard from me." B. "Farewell." A."And you get out of Ephesus."

§ 7.80  CALLIMACHUS
On Heraclitus of Halicarnassus, the Elegiac Poet
One told me of thy death, Heraclitus, and it moved me to tears, when I remembered how often the sun set on our talking. And thou, my Halicarnassian friend, liest somewhere, gone long long ago to dust; but they live, thy Nightingales, on which Hades who seizeth all shall not lay his hand.

§ 7.81  ANTIPATER OF SIDON On the Seven Sages
Of the seven sages Lindus bore thee, O Cleobulus, and the land of Sisyphus says that Periander is hers. Mytilene bore Pittacus and fair Priene Bion, and Miletus Thales, best support of Justice, Sparta Chilon, and Attica Solon, all guardians of admirable Prudence.

§ 7.82  Anonymous on Epicharmus
I hold Sicilian Epicharmus, a man armed by the Doric Muse for the service of Bacchus and the Satyrs.

§ 7.83  ANONYMOUS On Thales
Ionian Miletus nourished and revealed this Thales, first in wisdom of all astronomers.

§ 7.84  Anonymous on the same
Small is the tomb, but see how the fame of the deep thinker Thales reaches to the heavens.

§ 7.85  DIOGENES LAERTIUS on the same
Once, Zeus the Sun, didst thou carry off from the stadion, as he was viewing the games, Thales the sage. I praise thee for taking him away to be near thee, for in truth the old man could no longer see the stars from earth.

§ 7.86  ANONYMOUS On Solon
This island of Salamis which once put an end to the unrighteous insolence of the Medes, gave birth to this Solon the holy law-giver.

§ 7.87  DIOGENES LAERTIUS on the same
In a strange land, a Cyprian fire consumed the body of Solon, but Salamis holds his bones, whose dust becomes corn. But his tables of the law carried his soul at once to heaven, for by his good laws he lightened the burdens of his countrymen.

§ 7.88  By the same On Chilon
O Pollux, giver of light, I give thee thanks in that the son of Chilon gained by boxing the green olive-crown. And if his father seeing his son crowned, died of joy, why should we complain? May such a death be mine.

§ 7.89  CALLIMACHUS On Pittacus (not Sepulchral)
A guest from Atarne thus questioned Pittacus of Mytilene, the son of Hyrrha. "Daddy greybeard! a two-fold marriage invites me. The one bride is suitable to me in fortune and family, but
the other is my better. Which is best? Come, advise me which to take to wife." So spoke he and Pittacus raising his staff, the weapon of his old age, said "Look! they will tell you all you need know The boys at the broad cross-roads were whipping their swift top" Go after them," he said, and the man went and stood close to them, and they were saying, "Drive the way that suits you." The stranger, hearing this, refrained from catching at a match with a greater home, understanding the oracle of the boys’ words. Therefore as he brought home the bride of low estate, so do thou, go and "drive her that suits you."

§ 7.90  ANONYMOUS On Bias
This stone covers Bias the great ornament of Ionia born on the famous soil of Priene.

§ 7.91  DIOGENES LAERTIUS on the same
Here I cover Bias, whom Hermes led gently to Hades, his head white with the snows of age. He spoke for a friend in court and then sinking into the boy’s arms he continued to sleep a long sleep.
Bias, after having made a speech in court on behalf of some one, was fatigued and rested his head on his nephew’s breast. His client won the case, but at its close Bias was found to be dead.

§ 7.92  By the same On Anacharsis
When Anacharsis went to Scythia after many toils he was persuading them all to live in the Greek manner. His unfinished speech was still on his lips, when a winged reed carried him off swiftly to the immortals.

§ 7.93  ANONYMOUS On Pherecydes
The end of all wisdom is in me. If aught befall me, tell my Pythagoras that he is the first of all in the land of Hellas. In speaking thus I do not lie.

§ 7.94  Anonymous on Anaxagoras
Here lies Anaxagoras who advanced furthest towards the goal of truth concerning the heavenly universe.

§ 7.95  DIOGENES LAERTIUS on the same
Anaxagoras once said that the sun was a red-hot mass, and for this was about to be killed. His friend Pericles saved him, but lie ended his own life owing to the sensitiveness of his wise mind.

§ 7.96  By the same On Socrates
Drink now, O Socrates, in the house of Zeus. Of a truth a god called thee wise and Wisdom is a goddess. From the Athenians thou didst receive simply hemlock, but they themselves drank it by thy mouth.

§ 7.97  By the same On Xenophon
Xenophon not only went up country to the Persians for Cyrus’ sake, but seeking a way up to the house of Zeus. For after showing that the affairs of Greece belonged to his education, he recorded how beautiful was the wisdom of Socrates.

§ 7.98  By the same
If the citizens of Cranaus and Cecrops condemned you, Xenophon, to exile because of your friend Cyrus, yet hospitable Corinth received you, with which you were so pleased and content, and decided to remain there.

§ 7.99  PLATO On Dio
The Fates decreed tears for Hecuba and the Trojan women even at the hour of their birth; and after thou, Dio, hadst triumphed in the accomplishment of noble deeds, the gods spilt all thy far-reaching hopes. But thou liest in thy spacious city, honoured by thy countrymen, Dio, who didst madden my soul with love.

§ 7.100  By the same On Alexis and Phaedrus (not an epitaph)
Now when I said nothing except just that Alexis is fair, he is looked at everywhere and by everyone when he appears. Why, my heart, dost thou point out bones to dogs and have to sorrow for it afterwards? Was it not thus that I lost Phaedrus?

§ 7.101  DIOGENES LAERTIUS On Speusippus
If I had not heard that Speusippus would die so, no one would have persuaded me to say this, that he was not akin to Plato; for then he would not have died disheartened by reason of a matter exceeding small.

§ 7.102  By the same On Xenocrates
Stumbling once over a brazen cauldron and hitting his forehead Xenocrates, who in all matters and everywhere had shown himself to be a man, called out Oh! sharply and died.

§ 7.103  ANTAGORAS On Polemo and Crates
Stranger, as thou passest by, tell that this tomb holds god-like Crates and Polemo, great-hearted kindred spirits, from whose inspired mouths the holy word rushed. A pure pursuit of wisdom, obedient to their unswerving doctrines, adorned their divine lives.

§ 7.104  DIOGENES LAERTIUS
On Arcesilaus
Arcesilaus, why did you drink so much wine, and so unsparingly as to slip out of your senses? I am not so sorry for you because you died as because you did violence to the Muses by using immoderate cups.

§ 7.105  On Lacydes
And about you too, Lacydes, I heard that Bacchus took hold of you by the toes and dragged you to Hades. It is clear; when Bacchus enters the body in force he paralyses the limbs. Is that not why he is called Lyaeus?

§ 7.106  On Epicurus
"Adieu, and remember my doctrines," were Epicurus’ last words to his friends when dying. For after entering a warm bath, he drank wine and then on the top of it he drank cold death.

§ 7.107  On Aristotle
Eurymedon, the priest of Demeter, was once about to prosecute Aristotle for impiety, but he escaped by drinking hemlock. This was then, it seems, to overcome unjust slander without trouble.

§ 7.108  On Plato
How, if Phoebus had not produced Plato in Greece, could he cure men’s souls by letters? For his son Asclepius is the healer of the body, as Plato is of the immortal soul.

§ 7.109  on the same
Phoebus generated for mortals both Asclepius and Plato, the one to save the body, the other the soul. After celebrating a marriage he went to the city which he had founded for himself and was established in the house of Zeus.

§ 7.110  On Theophrastus
This, then, was no idle word that some man spoke, that the bow of wisdom breaks when relaxed. As long as Theophrastus worked he was sound of limb, but when he grew slack he died infirm.

§ 7.111  On Strato
This Strato to whom Lampsacus gave birth was a thin man (I don't mind if you don't attend. I assert this at least). He ever fought with disease and died without feeling it.

§ 7.112  On Lyco
No, neither shall we neglect to tell how Lyco died of the gout. The thing that surprises me most is that he who formerly walked with other people’s feet managed in one night to run all the way to Hades.

§ 7.113  On Demetrius Phalereus
An asp that had much poison, not to be wiped off, darting no light but black death from its eyes, slew wise Demetrius.

§ 7.114  On Heraclides Ponticus
Heraclides, you wished to leave a report among men that when you died you became a live serpent in the eyes of all. But you were taken in, cunning wise man, for the beast was indeed a serpent, but you, being no wise man, were shown to be a beast.

§ 7.115  On Antisthenes
You were in your lifetime a Dog, Antisthenes, of such a nature that you bit the heart with words, not with your mouth. But someone perchance will say you died of consumption. What does that matter? One must have someone to guide one to Hades.

§ 7.116  On Diogenes
"Diogenes, tell what fate took you to Hades? A dog’s fierce bite."

§ 7.117  ZENODOTUS On Zeno
Zeno, reverend grey-browed sage, thou didst found the self-sufficient life, abandoning the pursuit of vainglorious wealth; for virile (and thou didst train thyself to foresight) was the school of thought thou didst institute, the mother of dauntless freedom. If thy country were Phoenicia what reproach is that? Cadmus too, from whom Greece learnt writing, was a Phoenician.

§ 7.118  DIOGENES LAERTIUS on the same
Some say that Zeno of Citium, suffering much from old age, remained without food, and others that striking the earth with his hand he said, "I come of my own accord. Why dost thou call me?"
on the ground, he cried, "I come; why callest thou me?" and at once strangled himself.

§ 7.119  ANONYMOUS On Pythagoras
Dedicated when Pythagoras discovered that famous figure to celebrate which he made a grand sacrifice of an ox.

§ 7.120  XENOPHANES on the same
They say that once he passed by as a dog was being beaten, and pitying it spoke as follows, "Stop and beat it not; for the soul is that of a friend; I know it, for I heard it speak."

§ 7.121  DIOGENES LAERTIUS on the same
Not you alone, Pythagoras, abstained from living things, but we do so likewise; who ever touched living things? But when they are boiled and roasted and salted, then they have no life in them and we eat them.

§ 7.122  By the same on the same
Alas! why did Pythagoras reverence beans so much and die together with his pupils? There was a field of beans, and in order to avoid trampling them he let himself be killed on the road by the Agrigentines.

§ 7.123  By the same
On Empedocles
And you too, Empedocles, purifying your body by liquid flame, drank immortal Are from the crater. I will not say that you threw yourself on purpose into Etna's stream, but wishing to hide you fell in against your will.

§ 7.124  By the same on the same
They say Empedocles died by a fall from a carriage, breaking his right thigh. But if he jumped into the fiery bowl and drank life, how is.it his tomb is shown still in Megara?

§ 7.125  ANONYMOUS On Epicharmus
Even as the great burning sun surpasseth the stars and the sea is stronger than the rivers, so I say that Epicharmus, whom this his city Syracuse crowned, excelleth all in wisdom.

§ 7.126  DIOGENES LAERTIUS On Philolaus
I advise all men to cure suspicion, for even if you don’t do a thing, but people think you do, it is ill for you. So Croton, his country, once slew Philolaus because they thought he wished to have a house like a tyrant’s.

§ 7.127  By the same On Heraclitus
I often wondered about Heraclitus, how after leading such an unhappy life, he finally died. For an evil disease, watering his body, put out the light in his eyes and brought on darkness.

§ 7.128  ANONYMOUS on the same
I am Heraclitus. Why do you pull me this way and that, ye illiterate? I did not work for you, but for those who understand me. One man for me is equivalent to thirty thousand and countless men are but as nobody. This I proclaim even in the house of Persephone.

§ 7.129  DIOGENES LAERTIUS On Zeno the Eleatic
You wished, Zeno — 'twas a goodly wish — to kill the tyrant and free Elea, but you were slain, for the tyrant caught you and pounded you in a mortar. Why do I speak thus? It was your body, not you.

§ 7.130  DIOGENES LAERTIUS on Protagoras
About you, too, Protagoras, I heard that once leaving Athens in your old age you died on the road; for the city of Cecrops decreed your exile. So you escaped from Athens but not from Pluto.
The same saying is attributed to Democritus by Seneca, and both philosophers no doubt shared this contempt for the many.

§ 7.131  ANONYMOUS on the same
Protagoras is said to have died here; but... his body alone reached the earth, his soul leapt up to the wise.

§ 7.132  ANONYMOUS on the same
We know too, Protagoras, the sharp arrow of thy wisdom. Yet it wounds not, but is a sweet unguent.

§ 7.133  DIOGENES LAERTIUS On Anaxarchus
Bray it in the mortar still more, Nicocreon, it is a bag, bray it, but Anaxarchus is already in the house of Zeus, and Persephone soon, carding you, will say, "Out on thee, evil miller."

§ 7.134  ANONYMOUS On Gorgias
Here I lie, the head of Cynic Gorgias, no longer clearing my throat nor blowing my nose.

§ 7.135  ANONYMOUS
On Hippocrates of Cos, the Physician
Here lieth Thessalian Hippocrates, by descent a Coan, sprung from the immortal stock of Phoebus. Armed by Health he gained many victories over Disease, and won great glory not by chance, but by science.

§ 7.136  ANTIPATER On Priam
Small am I, the barrow of Priam the hero, not that I am worthy of such a man, but because I was built by the hands of his foes.

§ 7.137  ANONYMOUS On Hector
Do not judge Hector by his tomb or measure by his barrow the adversary of all Hellas. The Iliad, Homer himself, Greece, the Achaeans in flight — these are my tomb by these all was my barrow built. (If the earth you see above me is little, it is no disgrace to me, I was entombed by the hands of my foes the Greeks.)

§ 7.138  ACERATUS GRAMMATICUS on the same
Hector, constant theme of Homer’s books, strongest bulwark of the god-built wall, Homer rested at thy death and with that the pages of the Iliad were silenced.

§ 7.139  ANONYMOUS on the same and on Alexander of Macedon
With Hector perished Troy and no longer raised her hand to resist the attack of the Danai. And Pella, too, perished with Alexander. So fatherlands glory in men, their sons, not men in their fatherlands.

§ 7.140  ARCHIAS OF MACEDON On Hector
Tell, O column, the parentage of him beneath thee and his name and country and by what death he died. "His father was Priam, his country Ilion, his name Hector, and he perished fighting for his native land."

§ 7.141  ANTIPHILUS OF BYZANTIUM. On Protesilaus
O THESSALIAN Protesilaus, long ages shall sing of thee, how thou didst strike the first blow in Troy’s predestined fall. The Nymphs tend and encircle with overshadowing elms thy tomb opposite hated Ilion. Wrathful are the trees, and if they chance to see the walls of Troy, they shed their withered leaves. How bitter was the hatred of the heroes if a part of their enmity lives yet in soulless branches.

§ 7.142  Anonymous On Achilles
This is the tomb of Achilles the man-breaker, which the Achaeans built to be a terror to the Trojans even in after generations, and it slopes to the beach, that the son of Thetis the sea-goddess may be saluted by the moan of the waves.

§ 7.143  ANONYMOUS On Achilles and Patroclus
Hail Aeacides and Menoetiades, ye twain supreme in Love and Arms.

§ 7.144  ANONYMOUS On Nestor
Sweet-spoken Nestor of Pylus, the hero-son of Neleus, the old, old man, has his tomb in pleasant Pylus.

§ 7.145  ASCLEPIADES on Ajax
Here sit I, miserable Virtue, by this tomb of Ajax, with shorn hair, smitten with heavy sorrow that cunning Fraud hath more power with the Greeks than I.

§ 7.146  ANTIPATER OF SIDON on the same
By the tomb of Ajax on the Rhoetean shore, I, Virtue, sit and mourn, heavy at heart, with shorn locks, in soiled raiment, because that in the judgment court of the Greeks not Virtue but Fraud triumphed. Achilles’ arms would fain cry, "We want no crooked words, but manly valour."

§ 7.147  ARCHIAS on the same
Alone in defence of the routed host, with extended shield didst thou, Ajax, await the Trojan host that threatened the ships. Neither the crashing stones moved thee, nor the cloud of arrows, nor the clash of spears and swords; but even so, like some crag, standing out and firmly planted thou didst face the hurricane of the foes. If Hellas did not give thee the arms of Achilles to wear, a worthy reward of thy valour, it was by the counsel of the Fates that she erred, in order that thou shouldst meet with doom from no foe, but at thine own hand.

§ 7.148  ANONYMOUS on the same
This is the tomb of Telamonian Ajax whom Fate slew by means of his own hand and sword. For Clotho, even had she wished it, could not find among mortals another able to kill him.

§ 7.149  LEONTIUS SCHOLASTICUS on the same
The Telamonian lies low in Troy, but he gave no foeman cause to boast of his death. For Time finding no other man worthy of such a deed entrusted it to his own self-slaying hand.

§ 7.150  By the same on the same
Ajax lieth in Troy after a thousand vaunted deeds of prowess, blaming not his foes but his friends.

§ 7.151  ANONYMOUS On Ajax and Hector
Hector gave his sword to Ajax and Ajax his girdle to Hector, and the gifts of both are alike instruments of death.

§ 7.152  ANONYMOUS on the same
Bitter favours did Hector and Ajax of the great shield give each other after the fight in memory of their friendship. For Hector received a girdle and gave a sword in return, and they proved in death the favour that was in the gifts. The sword slew Ajax in his madness, and the girdle dragged Hector behind the chariot Thus the adversaries gave each other the self-destroying gifts, which held death in them under pretence of kindness.

§ 7.153  HOMER or CLEOBULUS OF LINDUS
I am a maiden of brass, and rest on Midas’ tomb. As long as water flows, and tall trees put forth their leaves, abiding here upon the tearful tomb, I tell the passers-by that Midas is buried here.

I am set here, an image common to the Megarians and the Argives, the avenger of unhappy Psamathe. A ghoul, a denizen of the tomb am I, and he who slew me was Coroebus; here under my feet he lies, all for the tripod. For even so did the voice of Delphi decree, that I should be the monument of Apollo’s bride and tell her story.

§ 7.155  ANONYMOUS On Philistion the actor of Nicaea
I, Philistion of Nicaea, who tempered with laughter the miserable life of men, lie here, the remains of all life; I often died, but never yet just in this way.

§ 7.156  ISIDORUS OF AEGAE
By his bird-lime and canes Eumelus lived on the creatures of the air, simply but in freedom. Never did he kiss a strange hand for his belly’s sake. This his craft supplied him with luxury and delight Ninety years he lived, and now sleeps here, having left to his children his bird-lime, nets and canes.

§ 7.157  ANONYMOUS
Three decades and twice three years did the heavenly augurs fix as the measure of my life. I am content therewith, for that age is the finest flower of life. Even ancient Nestor died.

§ 7.158  ANONYMOUS
On Marcellus the Physician of Side
This is the tomb of Marcellus the renowned physician, a most celebrated man, honoured by the gods, whose books were presented (to the public library) in fair-built Rome by Hadrian the best of our former emperors, and by admirable Antoninus, Hadrian's son; so that among men in after years he might win renown for his eloquence, the gift of Phoebus Apollo. He sung of the treatment of diseases in forty skilled books of heroic verse called the Chironides.

§ 7.159  NICARCHUS
Orpheus won the highest prize among mortals by his harp, Nestor by the skill of his sweet-phrased tongue, divine Homer, the learned in lore, by the art of his verse, but Telephanes, whose tomb this is, by the flute.

§ 7.160  ANACREON
Valiant in war was Timocritus, whose tomb this is. War is not sparing of the brave, but of cowards.

§ 7.161  ANTIPATER OF SIDON
On Aristomenes, on whose Tomb stood an Eagle
"Fleet-winged bird of Zeus, why dost thou stand in splendour on the tomb of great Aristomenes?" "I tell unto men that as I am chief among the birds, so was he among the youth. Timid doves watch over cowards, but we delight in dauntless men."

§ 7.162  DIOSCORIDES
Burn not Euphrates, Philonymus, nor defile Fire for me. I am a Persian as my fathers were, a Persian of pure stock, yea, master: to defile Fire is for us bitterer than cruel death. But wrap me up and lay me in the ground, washing not my corpse; I worship rivers also, master.

§ 7.163  LEONIDAS
A. "WHO art thou, who thy father, lady lying under the column of Parian marble?" B. "Praxo, daughter of Calliteles." A. "And thy country?’ B. "Samos." A. "Who laid thee to rest?". B. "Theocritus to whom my parents gave me in marriage." A. "And how didst thou die?" B. "In childbirth." A. "How old?" B. "Twenty-two." if. "Childless then?" B. "No! I left behind my three year old Calliteles." A. "May he live and reach a ripe old age." B. "And to thee, stranger, may Fortune give all good things."

§ 7.164  ANTIPATER OF SIDON A Variant of the Last
A. "TELL me, lady, thy parentage, name and country." B. "Calliteles begat me, Praxo was my name, and my land Samos." A. "And who erected this monument?" B. "Theocritus who loosed my maiden zone, untouched as yet" A. "How didst thou die?" B. "In the pains of labour." A. "And tell me what age thou hadst reached." B. "Twice eleven years." A. "Childless?" B. "No, stranger, I left Calliteles behind me, my baby boy." A. "May he reach a grey and blessed old age." B. "And may Fortune, O stranger, steer the course of all thy life before a fair breeze."

§ 7.165  By the same, OR BY ARCHIAS Another Variant
A. "TELL me, lady, who thou wast?" B. "Praxo." A. "Who thy father?" B. "Calliteles." A. "And from what country art thou?"
B. "Samos." A. "Who made thy tomb?" B. "Theocritus who took me to wife." A. "How didst thou die?" B. "In labour pangs." A. "At what age?" B. "Twenty-two." A. "Hast thou left a child?" B. "Calliteles, a baby of three." A. "May he grow to manhood." B. "And may Fortune, O wayfarer, end thy life happily."

§ 7.166  DIOSCORIDES OR NICARCHUS
In Africa on the banks of the Nile resteth with her twin babes Lamisca of Samos the twenty year old daughter of Nicarete and Eupolis, who breathed her last in the bitter pangs of labour. Bring to the girl, ye maidens, such gifts as ye give to one newly delivered, and shed warm tears upon her cold tomb.

§ 7.167  DIOSCORIDES OR NICARCHUS, OR BY HECATAEUS OF THASOS
Call me Polyxena the wife of Archelaus, daughter of Theodectes and ill-fated Demarete, a mother too in so far at least as I bore a child; for Fate overtook my babe ere it was twenty days old, and I died at eighteen, for a brief time a mother, for a brief time a bride in all short-lived.

§ 7.168  ANTIPATER OF THESSALONICA
"Let women after this pray for children," cried Polyxo, her belly torn by three babes; and in the midwife’s hands she fell dead, while the boys slid from her hollow flanks to the ground, a live birth from a dead mother. So one god took life from her and gave it to them.

§ 7.169  ANONYMOUS
On the statue of a heifer that stands opposite Byzantium in Chrysopolis. Inscribed on the column.
I am not the image of the Argive heifer, nor is the sea that faces me, the Bosporus, called after me. She of old was driven to Pharos by the heavy wrath of Hera; but I here am a dead Athenian woman, I was the bed-fellow of Chares, and sailed with him when he sailed here to meet Philip’s ships in battle. I was called Boeidion (little cow) then, and now I, bed-fellow of Chares, enjoy a view of two continents.

§ 7.170  POSEIDIPPUS OR CALLIMACHUS
The dumb image of himself attracted Archianax the three year old boy, as he was playing by the well. His mother dragged him all dripping from the water, asking herself if any life was left in him. The child defiled not with death the dwelling of the Nymphs, but fell asleep on his mother’s knees, and slumbers sound.

§ 7.171  MNASALCAS OF SICYON.
Here, too, the birds of heaven shall rest their swift wings, alighting on this sweet plane-tree. For Poemander of Melos is dead, and cometh here no longer, his fowling canes smeared with lime.

§ 7.172  ANTIPATER OF SIDON
I, Alcimenes, who used to protect the crops from the starlings and that high-flying robber the Bistonian crane, was swinging the pliant arms of my leathern sling to keep the crowd of birds away, when a dipsas viper wounded me about the ankles, and injecting into my flesh the bitter bile from her jaws robbed me of the sunlight. Look ye how gazing at what was in the air I noticed not the evil that was creeping at my feet.

§ 7.173  DIOTIMUS OR LEONIDAS
Op themselves in the evening the kine came home to byre from the hill through the heavy snow. But Therimachus, alas! sleeps the long sleep under the oak. The fire of heaven laid him to rest.

§ 7.174  ERYCIAS on the same
No longer, Therimachus, dost thou play thy shepherds’ tunes on the pipes near this crooked-leaved plane. Nor shall the horned kine listen again to the sweet music thou didst make, reclining by the shady oak. The burning bolt of heaven slew thee, and they at nightfall came down the hill to their byre driven by the snow.

§ 7.175  ANTIPHILUS
So there is no more turf, husbandman, left for thee to break up, and thy oxen tread on the backs of tombs, and the share is among the dead! What doth it profit thee? How much is this wheat ye shall snatch from ashes, not from earth? Ye shall not live for ever, and another shall plough you up, you who set to all the example of this evil husbandry.

§ 7.176  ANTIPHILUS
Not because I lacked funeral when I died, do I lie here, a naked corpse on wheat-bearing land. Duly was I buried once on a time, but now by the ploughman's hand the iron share hath rolled me out of my tomb. Who said that death was deliverance from evil, when not even the tomb, stranger, is the end of my sufferings?

§ 7.177  SIMONIDES
This monument his father erected above Spinther on his death (the rest is missing).

§ 7.178  DIOSCORIDES OF NICOPOLIS
I am a Lydian, yea a Lydian, but thou, master, didst lay me, thy foster-father Timanthes, in a freeman’s grave. Live long and prosper free from calamity, and if stricken in years thou comest to me, I am thine, O master, in Hades too.

§ 7.179  Anonymous
Now, too, underground I remain faithful to thee, master, as before, not forgetting thy kindness, how thrice when I was sick thou didst set me safe upon my feet, and hast laid me now under sufficient shelter, announcing on the stone my name, Manes, a Persian. Because thou hast been good to me thou shalt have slaves more ready to serve thee in the hour of need.

§ 7.180  APOLLONIDES
The doom of death hath been transferred, and in thy place, master, I, thy slave, fill the loathly grave. When I was building thy tearful chamber underground to lay thy body in after death, the earth around slid and covered me. Hades is not grievous to me. I shall dwell under thy sun.

§ 7.181  ANDRONICUS
Sore pitied, dear Democrateia, didst thou go to the dark house of Acheron, leaving thy mother to lament. And she, when thou wast dead, shore the grey hairs from her old head with the newly-sharpened steel.

§ 7.182  MELEAGER
No husband but Death did Clearista receive on her bridal night as she loosed her maiden zone. But now at eve the flutes were making music at the door of the bride, the portals of her chamber echoed to knocking hands. And at morn the death wail was loud, the bridal song was hushed and changed to a voice of wailing. The same torches that flamed round her marriage bed lighted her dead on her downward way to Hades.

§ 7.183  PARMENION
(As she had just loosed her maiden zone) Death came first and took the maidenhood of Crocale. The bridal song ended in wailing, and the fond anxiety of her parents was set to rest not by marriage but by the tomb.

§ 7.184  PARMENION
I am the tomb of the maiden Helen, and in mourning too for her brother who died before her I receive double tears from their mother. To her suitors I left a common grief; for the hope of all mourned equally for her who was yet no one’s.

§ 7.185  ANTIPATER OF THESSALONICA
The Italian earth holds me an African, and near to Rome I lie, a virgin yet, by these sands. Pompeia who reared me wept for me as for a daughter and laid me in a freewoman’s grave. Another light she hoped for, but this came earlier, and the torch was lit not as we prayed, but by Persephone.

§ 7.186  PHILIPPUS
But now the sweet flute was echoing in the bridal chamber of Nikippis, and the house rejoiced in the clapping of hands at her wedding. But the voice of wailing burst in upon the bridal hymn, and we saw her dead, the poor child, not yet quite a wife. O tearful Hades, why didst thou divorce the bridegroom and bride, thou who thyself takest delight in ravishment?

§ 7.187  PHILIPPUS
Aged Nico garlanded the tomb of maiden Melite. Hades, was thy judgement righteous?

§ 7.188  ANTONIUS THALLUS
Unhappy Cleanassa, thou wast ripe for marriage, being in the bloom of thine age. But at thy wedding attended not Hymenaeus to preside at the feast, nor did Hera who linketh man and wife come with her torches. Black-robed Hades burst in and by him the fell Erinys chanted the dirge of death. On the very day that the lights were lit around thy bridal bed thou earnest to no wedding chamber, but to thy funeral pyre.

§ 7.189  ARISTODICUS OF RHODES
No longer, shrill-voiced locust, shall the sun look on thee, as thou singest in the wealthy house of Alkis, for now thou hast flown to the meadows of Hades and the dewy flowers of golden Persephone.

§ 7.190  ANYTE OR LEONIDAS
For her locust, the nightingale of the fields, and her cicada that resteth on the trees one tomb hath little Myro made, shedding girlish tears; for inexorable Hades hath carried off her two pets.

§ 7.191  ARCHIAS
A magpie I, that oft of old screeched in answer to the speech of the shepherds and woodcutters and fishermen. Often like some many-voiced Echo, with responsive lips I struck up a mocking strain. Now I lie on the ground, tongueless and speechless, having renounced my passion for mimicry.

§ 7.192  MNASALCAS On a Locust
No longer, locust, sitting in the fruitful furrows shalt thou sing with thy shrill-toned wings, nor shalt thou delight me as I lie under the shade of the leaves, striking sweet music from thy tawny wings.

§ 7.193  SIMIAS (Not an Epitaph)
This locust crouching in the leaves of a vine I caught as I was walking in this copse of fair trees, so that in a well-fenced home it may make noise for me, chirping pleasantly with its tongueless mouth.

§ 7.194  MNASALCAS
This clay vessel set beside the far-reaching road holds the body of Democritus’ locust that made music with its wings. When it started to sing its long evening hymn, all the house rang with the melodious song.

§ 7.195  MELEAGER
{This and 196 are not epitaphs but amatory poems)
Locust, beguiler of my loves, persuader of sleep, locust, shrill-winged Muse of the corn fields, Nature’s mimic lyre, play for me some tune I love, beating with thy dear feet thy talking wings, that so, locust, thou mayest deliver me from the pains of sleepless care, weaving a song that enticeth Love away. And in the morning I will give thee a fresh green leek, and drops of dew sprayed from my mouth.

§ 7.196  MELEAGER On a Cicada
Noisy cicada, drunk with dew drops, thou singest thy rustic ditty that fills the wilderness with voice, and seated on the edge of the leaves, striking with saw-like legs thy sunburnt skin thou shrillest music like the lyre’s. But sing, dear, some new tune to gladden the woodland nymphs, strike up some strain responsive to Pan’s pipe, that I may escape from love and snatch a little midday sleep, reclining here beneath the shady plane-tree.

§ 7.197  PHAENNUS
I am the locust who brought deep sleep to Democritus, when I started the shrill music of my wings. And Democritus, O wayfarer, raised for me when I died a seemly tomb near Oropus.

§ 7.198  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
Wayfarer, though the tombstone that surmounts my grave seems small and almost on the ground, blame not Philaenis. Me, her singing locust, that used to walk on thistles, a thing that looked like a straw, she loved and cherished for two years, because I made a melodious noise. And even when I was dead she cast me not away, but built this little monument of my varied talent.

§ 7.199  TYMNES On an unknown bird called elaetis
Bird, nursling of the Graces, who didst modulate thy voice till it was like unto a halcyon's, thou art gone, dear elaeus, and the silent ways of night possess thy gentleness and thy sweet breath.

§ 7.200  NICIAS
No longer curled under the leafy branch shall I delight in sending forth a voice from my tender wings. For I fell into the .... hand of a boy, who caught me stealthily as I was seated on the green leaves.

§ 7.201  PAMPHILUS
No longer perched on the green leaves dost thou shed abroad thy sweet call, for as thou wast singing, noisy cicada, a foolish boy with outstretched hand slew thee.

§ 7.202  ANYTE On a Cock
No longer, as of old, shalt thou awake early to rouse me from bed, flapping rapidly thy wings; for the spoiler stole secretly upon thee, as thou didst sleep, and slew thee, nipping thy throat swiftly with his claws.

§ 7.203  SIMIAS
No longer, my decoy partridge, dost thou shed from thy throat thy resonant cry through the shady coppice, hunting thy pencilled fellows in their woodland feeding-ground; for thou art gone on thy last journey to the house of Acheron.

§ 7.204  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS
No longer, my poor partridge, exiled from the rocks, does thy plaited house hold thee in its light withes; no longer in the shine of the bright-eyed Dawn dost thou shake the tips of thy sun-warmed wings. Thy head the cat bit off, but all the rest of thee I seized from her, nor did she satisfy her wicked jaws. Now may the dust lie not light on thee but heavy, lest she drag thy corpse from the tomb.

§ 7.205  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS
Does the house-cat, after eating my partridge, expect to live in my halls? No! dear partridge, I will not leave thee unhonoured in death, but on thy body I will slay thy foe. For thy spirit grows ever more perturbed until I perform the rites that Pyrrhus executed on the tomb of Achilles.

§ 7.206  DAMOCHARIS THE GRAMMARIAN, PUPIL OF AGATHIAS
Wickedest of cats, rival of the man-eating pack, thou art one of Actaeon’s hounds. By eating the partridge of Agathias thy master, thou hurtest him no less than if thou hadst feasted on himself. Thy heart is set now on partridges, but the mice meanwhile are dancing, running off with thy dainties.

§ 7.207  MELEAGER
I was a swift-footed long-eared leveret, torn from my mother’s breast while yet a baby, and sweet Phanion cherished and reared me in her bosom, feeding me on flowers of spring. No longer did 1 pine for my mother, but I died of surfeiting, fattened by too many banquets. Close to her couch she buried me so that ever in her dreams she might see my grave beside her bed.

§ 7.208  ANYTE
This tomb Damis built for his steadfast war-horse pierced through the breast by gory Ares. The black blood bubbled through his stubborn hide, and he drenched the earth in his sore death-pangs.

§ 7.209  ANTIPATER OF SIDON
Here by the threshing-floor, O ant, thou careworn toiler, I built for thee a grave-mound of thirsty clod, so that in death too thou mayest delight in the corn-bearing furrow of Demeter, as thou liest chambered in the earth the plough upturned.

§ 7.210  ANTIPATER OF SIDON
Just when thou hadst become the mother,swallow, of a new-born brood, just when thou first wast warming thy children under thy wings, a many-coiled serpent, darting into the nest where lay thy young, robbed thee of the fruit of thy womb. Then when with all his might he came to slay thee, too, as thou wast lamenting them, he fell into the greedy breath of the hearth-fire. So died he the deed undone. See how Hephaestus succoured and saved the race of his son Erichthonius.

§ 7.211  TYMNES
The stone tells that it contains here the white Maltese dog, Eumelus’ faithful guardian. They called him Bull while he still lived, but now the silent paths of night possess his voice.

§ 7.212  MNASALCAS On a Mare
Stranger, say that this is the tomb of wind-footed Aethyia, a child of the dry land, lightest of limb; often toiling over the long course, she, like a bird, travelled as far as do the ships.

§ 7.213  ARCHIAS
Once, shrilling cicada, perched on the green branches of the luxuriant pine, or of the shady domed stone-pine, thou didst play with thy delicately-winged back a tune dearer to shepherds than the music of the lyre. But now the unforeseen pit of Hades hides thee vanquished by the wayside ants. If thou wert overcome it is pardonable; for Maeonides, the lord of song, perished by the riddle of the fishermen.

§ 7.214  ARCHIAS
No longer, dolphin, darting through the bubbling brine, shalt thou startle the flocks of the deep, nor, dancing to the tune of the pierced reed, shalt thou throw up the sea beside the ships. No longer, foamer, shalt thou take the Nereids on thy back as of yore and carry them to the realms of Tethys; for the waves when they rose high as the headland of Malea drove thee on to the sandy beach.

§ 7.215  ANYTE
No longer exulting in the sea that carries me, shall I lift up my neck as I rush from the depths; no longer shall I snort round the decorated bows of the ship, proud of her figure-head, my image. But the dark sea-water threw me upon the land and here I lie by this narrow (?) beach.

§ 7.216  ANTIPATER OF THESSALONICA
The waves and rough surges drove me, the dolphin, on the land, a spectacle of misfortune for all strangers to look on. Yet on earth pity finds a place, for the men who saw me straightway in reverence decked me for my grave. But now the sea who bore me has destroyed me. What faith is there in the sea, that spared not even her own nursling?

§ 7.217  ASCLEPIADES (A slightly different version is attributed by Athenaeus to
Plato)
I hold Archeanassa the courtesan from Colophon even on whose wrinkles sweet Love sat. Ah, ye lovers, who plucked the fresh flowers of her youth in its first piercing brilliance, through what a fiery furnace did you pass!

§ 7.218  ANTIPATER OF SIDON
I contain her who in Love’s company luxuriated in gold and purple, more delicate than tender Cypris, Lais the citizen of sea-girt Corinth, brighter than the white waters of Pirene; that mortal Cytherea
who had more noble suitors than the daughter of Tyndareus, all plucking her mercenary favours. Hei very tomb smells of sweet-scented saffron; her bones are still soaked with fragrant ointment, and her anointed locks still breathe a perfume as of frankincense. For her Aphrodite tore her lovely cheeks, and sobbing Love groaned and wailed. Had she not made her bed the public slave of gain, Greece would have battled for her as for Helen.

§ 7.219  POMPEIUS THE YOUNGER
Lais, whose bloom was so lovely and delightful in the eyes of all, she who alone culled the lilies of the Graces, no longer looks on the course of the Sun’s golden-bitted steeds, but sleeps the appointed sleep, having bid farewell to revelling and young men’s rivalries and lovers’ torments and the lamp her confidant.

§ 7.220  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS
On my way to Ephyra I saw by the roadside the tomb of Lais of old time, so said the inscription; and shedding a tributary tear, I said "Hail, woman, for from report I pity thee whom I never saw. Ah, how didst thou vex the young men’s minds! but look, thou dwellest in Lethe, having laid thy beauty in the earth."

§ 7.221  Anonymous
Patrophila, ripe for love and the sweet works of Cypris, thou hast closed thy gentle eyes; gone is the charm of thy prattle, gone thy singing and playing, and thy eager pledging of the cup. Inexorable Hades, why didst thou steal our loveable companion? Hath Cypris maddened thee too?

§ 7.222  PHILODEMUS
Here lies the tender body of the tender being; here lies Trygonion the ornament of the wanton band of the emasculated, he who was at home by the holy shrine of Rhea, amid the noise of music and the gay prattling throng, the darling of the Mother of the Gods, he who alone among his effeminate fellows really loved the rites of Cypris, and whose charms came near those of Lais. Give birth, thou holy soil, round the grave-stone of the maenad not to brambles but to the soft petals of white violets.

§ 7.223  THYILLUS
The castanet dancer Aristion, who used to toss her hair among the pines in honour of Cybele, carried away by the music of the horned flute; she who could empty one upon the other three cups of untempered wine, rests here beneath the poplars, no more taking delight in love and the fatigue of the night-festivals. A long farewell to revels and frenzy! It lies low, the holy head that was covered erst by garlands of flowers.

§ 7.224  ANONYMOUS
I, Callicratia, bore nine and twenty children and did not witness the death of one, boy or girl; I lived to the age of a hundred and five without ever resting my trembling hand on a staff.

§ 7.225  ANONYMOUS
Time wears stone away and spares not iron, but with one sickle destroys all things that are. So this grave-mound of Laertes that is near the shore is being melted away by the cold rain. But the hero’s name is ever young, tor Time cannot, even if he will, make poesy dim.

§ 7.226  ANACREON OF TEOS
This whole city acclaimed Agathon, the doughty warrior, as he lay on the pyre after dying for Abdera; for Ares greedy of blood slew no other young man like to him in the whirlwind of the dreadful fight.

§ 7.227  DIOTIMUS
Not even a lion is as terrible in the mountains, as was Mico’s son Crinagoras in the clash of the shields. If this his covering be little, find no fault thereat; little is this land, but it bears men brave in war.

§ 7.228  ANONYMOUS
Androtion built me for himself, his children and his wife. As yet 1 am no one’s grave and so may 1 remain for long; but if it must be so, may I give earlier welcome to the earlier born.

§ 7.229  DIOSCORIDES
Dead on his shield to Pi tan a came Thrasybulus, having received seven wounds from the Argives, exposing his whole front to them; and old Tynnichus, as he laid his son’s blood-stained body on the pyre, said "Let cowards weep, but I will bury thee, my son, without a tear, thee who art both mine and Sparta’s."

§ 7.230  ERYCIUS OF CYZICUS
Demetrius, when thy mother received thee after thy flight from the battle, all thy fine arms lost, herself she straightway drove the death-dealing spear through thy sturdy side, and said "Die and let Sparta bear no blame; it was no fault of hers if my milk reared cowards."

§ 7.231  DAMAGETUS
Thus for Ambracia's sake the warrior Aristagoras, son of Theopompus, holding his shield on high, chose death rather than flight. Wonder not thereat: a Dorian cares for his country, not for the loss of his young life.

§ 7.232  ANTIPATER OF SIDON
This Lydian land holds Amyntor, Philip’s son, whose hands were often busied with iron war. Him no painful disease led to the house of Night, but he perished holding his round shield over his comrade.

§ 7.233  APOLLONIDES
Aelius, the Roman captain, whose armed neck was loaded with golden torques, when he fell into his last illness and saw the end was inevitable, was minded of his own valour and driving his sword into his vitals, said as he was dying "I am vanquished of my own will, lest Disease boast of the deed."

§ 7.234  PHILIPPUS OF THESSALONICA
Aelius, the bold captain, whose neck was hung with the golden torques he had won in the wars, when crippled by wasting disease, ran back in his mind to the history of his past deeds of valour, and drove his sword into his vitals, saying but this: "Men perish by the sword, cowards by disease."

§ 7.235  DIODORUS OF TARSUS
Measure not by this Magnesian tomb the greatness of the name, nor forget the deeds of Themistocles. Judge of the patriot by Salamis and the ships, and thereby shalt thou find him greater than Athens herself

§ 7.236  ANTIPATER OF THESSALONICA
I, This Magnesian tomb, am not that of Themistocles, but I was built as a record of the envious misjudgment of the Greeks.

§ 7.237  ALPHEIUS OF MITYLENE
Carve on my tomb the mountains and the sea, and midmost of both the sun as witness; yea, and the deep currents of the ever-flowing rivers, whose streams sufficed not for Xerxes' host of the thousand ships. Carve Salamis too, here where the Magnesian people proclaim the tomb of dead Themistocles.

§ 7.233  ADDAEUS
I, Philip, who first set the steps of Macedonia in the path of war, lie here clothed in the earth of Aegae. No king before me did such deeds, and if any have greater to boast of, it is because he is of my blood.

§ 7.239  PARMENION
It is a lying report that Alexander is dead if Phoebus be true. Not even Hades can lay hand on the invincible.

§ 7.240  ADDAEUS
If one would sing of the tomb of Alexander of Macedon, let him say that both continents are his monument.

§ 7.241  ANTIPATER OF SIDON
Again and again did thy father and mother, Ptolemy, defile their hair in their grief for thee; and long did thy tutor lament thee, gathering in his warlike hands the dark dust to scatter on his head
Great Egypt tore her hair and the broad home of Europa groaned aloud. The very moon was darkened by mourning and deserted the stars and her heavenly path. For thou didst perish by a pestilence that devastated all the land, before thou couldst grasp in thy young hand the sceptre of thy fathers. Yet night did not receive thee from night; for such princes are not led by Hades to his house, but by Zeus to Olympus.

§ 7.242  MNASALCAS
These men delivering their country from the tearful yoke that rested on her neck, clothed themselves in the dark dust. High praise win they by their valour, and let each citizen looking on them dare to die for his country.

§ 7.243  LOLLIUS BASSUS
Look on this tomb beside the Phocian rock. I am the monument of those three hundred who were slain by the Persians, who died far from Sparta, having dimmed the might of Media and Lacedaemon alike. As for the image of an ox-slaying (?) beast say "It is the monument of the commander Leonidas"

§ 7.244  GAETULICUS
Fierce Ares drew these our swords, the three hundred from Argos and as many from Sparta, there where we fought out the fight from which no messenger returned, falling dead one upon another. Thyreae was the prize of the battle.

§ 7.245  GAETULICUS (?)
O Time, god who lookest upon all that befalls mortals, announce our fate to all, how striving to save the holy land of Hellas, we fell in the glorious Boeotian field.

§ 7.246  ANTIPATER OF SIDON
On the promontory of Issus by the wild waves of the Cilician sea we lie, the many myriads of Persians who followed our King Darius on our last journey. Alexander's the Macedonian is the deed.

§ 7.247  ALCAEUS
Unwept, O wayfarer, unburied we lie on this Thessalian hillock, the thirty thousand, a great woe to Macedonia; and nimbler than fleet-footed deer, fled that dauntless spirit of Philip.

§ 7.248  SIMONIDES
Four thousand from Peloponnesus once fought here with three millions.

§ 7.249  SIMONIDES
Stranger, bear this message to the Spartans, that we lie here obedient to their laws.

§ 7.250  SIMONIDES
We lie here, having given our lives to save all Hellas when she stood on a razor's edge.

§ 7.251  SIMONIDES
These men having clothed their dear country in inextinguishable glory, donned the dark cloud of death; and having died, yet they are not dead, for their valour’s renown brings them up from the house of Hades.

§ 7.252  ANTIPATER
These men who loved death in battle, got them no grave-stone like others, but valour for their valour.

§ 7.253  SIMONIDES
If to die well be the chief part of virtue, Fortune granted this to us above all others; for striving to endue Hellas with freedom, we lie here possessed of praise that groweth not old.

§ 7.254  SIMONIDES
Hail, ye champions who won great glory in war, ye sons of Athens, excellent horsemen; who once for your country of fair dancing-floors lost your young lives, fighting against a great part of the Greeks.

§ 7.254  SIMONIDES
I, Brotachos, a Gortynian of Crete, lie here, where I came not for this end, but to trade.

§ 7.255  AESCHYLUS
Dark Fate likewise slew these staunch spearmen, defending their country rich in flocks. Living is the fame of the dead, who steadfast to the last lie clothed in the earth of Ossa.

§ 7.256  PLATO
Leaving behind the sounding surge of the Aegean we lie on the midmost of the plains of Ecbatana. Farewell, Eretria, once our glorious country; farewell, Athens, the neighbour of Euboea; farewell, dear Sea.

§ 7.257  ANONYMOUS
The sons of Athens utterly destroying the army of the Persians repelled sore slavery from their country.

§ 7.258  SIMONIDES
These men once by the Eurymedon lost their bright youth, fighting with the front ranks of the Median bowmen, both on foot and from the swift ships; and dying they left behind them the glorious record of their courage.

§ 7.259  PLATO
We are Eretrians from Euboea and we lie near Susa, alas! how far from our own land.

§ 7.260  CARPHYLLIDES
Find no fault with my fate, traveller, in passing my tomb; not even in death have I aught that calls for mourning. I left children’s children, I enjoyed the company of one wife who grew old together with me. I married my three children, and many children sprung from these unions I lulled to sleep on my lap, never grieving for the illness or loss of one. They all, pouring their libations on my grave, sent me off on a painless journey to the home of the pious dead to sleep the sweet sleep.

§ 7.261  DIOTIMUS
What profiteth it to labour in childbirth and bring forth children if she who bears them is to see them dead! So his mother built the tomb for her little Bianor, while he should have done this for his mother.

§ 7.262  THEOCRITUS
The writing will tell what tomb-stone is this and who lies under it. I am the tomb of famous Glauca.

§ 7.263  ANACREON
And thee too, Clenorides, homesickness drove to death when thou didst entrust thyself to the wintry blasts of the south wind. That faithless weather stayed thy journey and the wet seas washed out thy lovely youth.

§ 7.264  LEONIDAS
A good voyage to all who travel on the sea; but let him who looses his cable from my tomb, if the storm carries him like me to the haven of Hades, blame not the inhospitable deep, but his own daring.

§ 7.266  PLATO
I am the tomb of a shipwrecked man, and that opposite is the tomb of a husbandman. So death lies in wait for us alike on sea and land.

§ 7.266  LEONIDAS
I am the tomb of the shipwrecked Diocles. Out on the daring of those who start from here, loosing their cable from me!

§ 7.267  POSIDIPPUS
Sailors, why do you bury me near the sea? Far away from it ye should have built the poor tomb of the shipwrecked man. I shudder at the noise of the waves my destroyers. Yet even so I wish you well for taking pity on Nicetas.

§ 7.268  PLATO
I whom ye look upon am a shipwrecked man. The sea pitied me, and was ashamed to bare me of my last vesture. It was a man who with fearless hands stripped me, burdening himself with so heavy a crime for so light a gain. Let him put it on and take it with him to Hades, and let Minos see him wearing my old coat.

§ 7.269  PLATO
Mariners, may ye be safe on sea and land; but know that this tomb ye are passing is a shipwrecked man’s.

§ 7.270  SIMONIDES
These men, when bringing the firstfruits from Sparta to Phoebus, one sea, one night, one ship brought to the grave.

§ 7.271  CALLIMACHUS
Would that swift ships had never been, for then we should not be lamenting Sopolis the son of Dioclides. Now somewhere on the sea his corpse is tossing, and what we pass by here is not himself, but a name and an empty grave.

§ 7.272  CALLIMACHUS
Lycus of Naxos died not on land, but in the sea. he saw his ship and his life lost together, as he sailed from Aegina to trade. Now he is somewhere in the sea, a corpse, and I his tomb, bearing his idle name, proclaim this word of truth "Sailor, foregather not with the sea when the Kids are setting."

§ 7.273  LEONIDAS
The fierce and sudden squall of the south-east wind, and the night and the waves that Orion at his dark setting arouses were my ruin, and I, Callaeschrus, glided out of life as I sailed the middle of the Libyan deep. 1 myself am lost, whirled hither and thither in the sea a prey to fishes, and it is a liar, this stone that rests on my grave.

§ 7.274  HONESTUS OF BYZANTIUM
I announce the name of Timocles and look round in every direction over the salt sea, wondering where his corpse may be. Alas! the fishes have devoured him ere this, and I, this useless stone, bear this idle writing carved on me.

§ 7.275  GAETULICUS
The Peloponnesus and the perilous sea of Crete and the blind cliffs of Cape Malea when he was turning it were fatal to Astydamas son of Damis the Cydonian. Ere this he has gorged the bellies of sea monsters. But on the land they raised me his lying tomb. What wonder! since "Cretans are liars," and even Zeus has a tomb there.

§ 7.276  HEGESIPPUS
The fishermen brought up from the sea in their net a half eaten man, a most mournful relic of some sea voyage. They sought not for unholy gain, but him and the fishes too they buried under this light coat of sand. Thou hast, O land, the whole of the shipwrecked man, but instead of the rest of his flesh thou hast the fishes who fed on it.

§ 7.277  CALLIMACHUS
Who art thou, shipwrecked stranger? Leontichus found thee here dead on the beach, and buried thee in this tomb, weeping for his own uncertain life; for he also rests not, but travels over the sea like a gull.

§ 7.278  ARCHIAS OF BYZANTIUM
Not even now I am dead shall I, shipwrecked Theris, cast up on land by the waves, forget the sleepless surges. For here under the brine-beaten hill, near the sea my foe, a stranger made my grave; and, ever wretched that 1 am, even among the dead the hateful roar of the billows sounds in my ears. Not even Hades gave me rest from trouble, since I alone even in death cannot lie in unbroken repose.

§ 7.279  ANONYMOUS
Cease to paint ever on this tomb oars and the beaks of ships over my cold ashes. The tomb is a shipwrecked man’s. Why wouldst thou remind him who is under earth of his disfigurement by the waves.

§ 7.280  ISIDORUS OF AEGAE
This hummock is a tomb; you there! hold in your oxen and pull up the ploughshare, for you are disturbing ashes. On such earth shed no seed of corn, but tears.

§ 7.281  HERACLIDES
Hands off, hands off, labourer! and cut not through this earth of the tomb. This clod is soaked with tears, and from earth thus soaked no bearded ear shall spring.

§ 7.282  THEODORIDAS
I am the tomb of a shipwrecked man; but set sail, stranger; for when we were lost, the other ships voyaged on.

§ 7.283  LEONIDAS
Why, roaring sea, didst thou not cast me up, Phyleus, son of Amphimenes, when I came to a sad end, far away from the bare beach, so that even wrapped in the evil mist of Hades I might not be near to thee?

§ 7.284  ASCLEPIADES
Keep off from me, thou fierce sea, eight cubits’ space and swell and roar with all thy might But if thou dost destroy the tomb of Eumares, naught shall it profit thee, for naught shalt thou find but bones and ashes.

§ 7.285  GLAUCUS OF NICOPOLIS
Not this earth or this light stone that rests thereon is the tomb of Erasippus, but all this sea whereon thou lookest. For he perished along with his ship, and his bones are rotting somewhere, but where only the gulls can tell.

§ 7.286  ANTIPATER OF THESSALONICA
Unhappy Nicanor, wasted by the grey sea, thou liest naked on a strange beach or perchance near the rocks; gone from thee are thy rich halls, and the hope of all Tyre has perished. None of thy possessions saved thee; alas, poor wight, thou art dead and hast laboured but for the fishes and the sea.

§ 7.287  ANTIPATER
Even in death shall the unappeased sea vex me, Lysis, buried as I am beneath this desert rock, sounding ever harshly in my ears close to my deaf tomb. Why, O men, did ye lay me next to her who reft me of breath, who wrecked me not trading on a merchantman, but embarked on a little rowing-boat? From the sea I sought to gain my living, and from the sea I drew forth death.

§ 7.288  ANTIPATER
I belong entirely to neither now I am dead, but sea and land possess an equal portion of me. My flesh the fishes ate in the sea, but my bones have been washed up on this cold beach.

§ 7.289  ANTIPATER OF MACEDONIA
When shipwrecked Antheus had swum ashore at night on a small plank to the mouth of the Peneus, a solitary wolf rushing from the thicket slew him off his guard. O waves less treacherous than the land!

§ 7.290  STATYLLIUS FLACCUS
The shipwrecked mariner had escaped the whirlwind and the fury of the deadly sea, and as he was lying on the Libyan sand not far from the beach, deep in his last sleep, naked and exhausted by the unhappy wreck, a baneful viper slew him. Why did he struggle with the waves in vain, escaping then the fate that was his lot on the land?

§ 7.291  XENOCRITUS OF RHODES
The salt sea still drips from thy locks, Lysidice, unhappy girl, shipwrecked and drowned. When the sea began to be disturbed, fearing its violence, thou didst fall from the hollow ship. The tomb proclaims thy name and that of thy land, Cyme, but thy bones are wave-washed on the cold beach. A bitter sorrow it was to thy father Aristomachus, who, escorting thee to thy marriage, brought there neither his daughter nor her corpse.

§ 7.292  THEON OF ALEXANDRIA
The halcyons, perchance, care for thee, Lenaeus, but thy mother mourns for thee dumbly over thy cold tomb.

§ 7.293  ISIDORUS OF AEGAE
No tempest, no stormy setting of a constellation overwhelmed Nicophemus in the waters of the Libyan Sea. But alas, unhappy man! stayed by a calm he was burnt up by thirst. This too was the work of the winds. Ah, what a curse are they to sailors, whether they blow or be silent!

§ 7.294  TULLIUS LAUREAS
Gryneus, the old man who got his living by his sea-worn wherry, busying himself with lines and hooks, the sea, roused to fury by a terrible southerly gale, swamped and washed up in the morning on the beach, his hands eaten off. Who would say that they had no sense, the fish who ate just those parts of him by which they used to perish?

§ 7.295  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
Theris, the old man who got his living from his lucky weels, who rode on the sea more than a gull, the preyer on fishes, the seine-hauler, the prober of crevices in the rocks, who sailed on no many-oared ship, in spite of all owed not his end to Arcturus, nor did any tempest drive to death his many decades, but he died in his reed hut, going out like a lamp of his own accord owing to his length of years. This tomb was not set up by his children or wife, but by the guild of his fellow fishermen.

§ 7.296  SIMONIDES
Since the sea parted Europe from Asia, since fierce Ares directs the battles of nations, never was a more splendid deed of arms performed by mortals on land and on the sea at once. For these men after slaying many Medes in Cyprus, took a hundred Phoenician ships at sea with their crews. Asia groaned aloud, smitten with both hands by their triumphant might.

§ 7.297  POLYSTRATUS
Lucius has smitten sore the great Achaean Acrocorinth, the star of Hellas, and the twin parallel shores of the Isthmus. One heap of stones covers the bones of those slain in the rout; and the sons of Aeneas left unwept and unhallowed by funeral rites the Achaeans who burnt the house of Priam.

§ 7.298  Anonymous
Woe is me! this is the worst of all, when men weep for a bride or bridegroom dead; but worse when it is for both, as for Eupolis and good Lycaenion, whose chamber falling in on the first night extinguished their wedlock. There is no other mourning to equal this by which you, Nicis, bewailed your son, and you, Theodicus, your daughter.

§ 7.299  NICOMACHUS
This (why say I "this?") is that Plataea which a sudden earthquake tumbled down utterly: only a little remnant was left, and we, the dead, lie here with our beloved city laid on us for a monument

§ 7.300  SIMONIDES
Here the earth covers Pythonax and his brother, before they saw the prime of their lovely youth. Their father, Megaristus, set up this monument to them dead, an immortal gift to his mortal sons.

§ 7.301  SIMONIDES
Leonidas, King of spacious Sparta, illustrious are they who died with thee and are buried here. They faced in battle with the Medes the force of multitudinous bows and of steeds fleet of foot.

§ 7.302  SIMONIDES
Every man grieves at the death of those near to him, but his friends and the city regret (?) Nicodicus.

§ 7.303  ANTIPATER OF SIDON
When little Cleodemus, still living on milk, set his foot outside the edge of the ship, the truly Thracian Boreas cast him into the swelling sea, and the waves put out the light of the baby’s life. Ino, thou art a goddess who knowest not pity, since thou didst not avert bitter death from this child of the same age as thy Melicertes.

§ 7.304  PISANDER OF RHODES
The man’s name was Hippaemon, the horse’s Podargos, the dog’s Lethargos, and the serving-man’s Babes, a Thessalian, from Crete, of Magnesian race, the son of Haemon. He perished fighting in the front ranks.

§ 7.305  ADDAEUS OF MITYLENE
The fisherman, Diotimus, whose boat, one and the same, was his faithful bearer at sea and on land the abode of his penury, fell into the sleep from which there is no awakening, and rowing himself, came to relentless Hades in his own ship; for the boat that had supported the old man in life paid him its last service in death too by being the wood for his pyre.

§ 7.306  ANONYMOUS
I was Abrotonon, a Thracian woman; but I say that I bare for Greece her great Themistocles.

§ 7.307  PAULUS SILENTIARIUS
A. "MY name is — — B. "What does it matter?" A. "My country is — -" B. "And what does that matter?" A. "I am of noble race."
B. "And if you were of the very dregs?" A. "I quitted life with a good reputation." B. "And had it been a bad one?" A. "And I now lie here." B. "Who are you and to whom are you telling this?"

§ 7.308  LUCIANUS
My name is Callimachus, and pitiless Hades carried me off when I was five years old and knew not care. Yet weep not for me; but a small share of life was mine and a small share of life’s evil.

§ 7.309  ANONYMOUS
I, Dionysius, lie here, sixty years old. I am of Tarsus; I never married and I wish my father never had.

§ 7.310  Anonymous
My murderer buried me, hiding his crime: since he gives me a tomb, may he meet with the same kindness as he shewed me.

§ 7.311  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS On Lot's Wife
This tomb has no corpse inside it; this corpse has no tomb outside it, but it is its own corpse and tomb.

§ 7.312  ASINIUS QUADRATUS On those slain by Sulla
They who took up arms against the Romans lie exhibiting the tokens of their valour. Not one died wounded in the back, but all alike perished by a secret treacherous death.

§ 7.313  Anonymous on Timon the Misanthrope
Here I lie, having broken away from my luckless soul. My name ye shall not learn, and may ye come, bad men, to a bad end.
(313-20 are on the same)

§ 7.314  PTOLEMAEUS
Learn not whence I am nor my name; know only that I wish those who pass my monument to die.

§ 7.315  ZENODOTUS or RHIANUS
Dry earth, grow a prickly thorn to twine all round me, or the wild branches of a twisting bramble, that not even a bird in spring may rest its light foot on me, but that I may repose in peace and solitude. For I, the misanthrope, Timon, who was not even beloved by my countrymen, am no genuine dead man even in Hades.

§ 7.316  LEONIDAS or ANTIPATER
Pass by my monument, neither greeting me, nor asking who I am and whose son. Otherwise mayst thou never reach the end of the journey thou art on, and if thou passest by in silence, not even then mayst thou reach the journey’s end.

§ 7.317  CALLIMACHUS
"Timon — for thou art no more — which is most hateful to thee, darkness or light?" "Darkness; there are more of you in Hades."
I cannot be regarded as a real citizen of Hades, being the enemy of my fellow ghosts.

§ 7.318  CALLIMACHUS(?)
Wish me not well, thou evil-hearted, but pass on. It is the same as if it were well with me if I get rid of thy company.

§ 7.319  ANONYMOUS
Timon is savage even now he is dead. Cerberus, door-keeper of Pluto, take care he doesn’t bite you.

§ 7.320  HEGESIPPUS
All around the tomb are sharp thorns and stakes; you will hurt your feet if you go near. I, Timon the misanthrope, dwell in it. But pass on — wish me all evil if you like, only pass on.

§ 7.321  ANONYMOUS
Dear Earth, receive old Amyntichus in thy bosom, mindful of all his toil for thee. Many an evergreen olive he planted in thee and with the vines of Bacchus he decked thee; he caused thee to abound in corn, and guiding the water in channels he made thee rich in pot-herbs and fruit. Therefore lie gently on his grey temples and clothe thee with many flowers in spring.

§ 7.322  ANONYMOUS
Look on the tomb of Cnossian Idomeneus, and I, Meriones the son of Molos, have mine hard by.

§ 7.323  ANONYMOUS
One tomb holds two brothers, for both were born and died on the same day.

§ 7.324  ANONYMOUS
Beneath this stone I lie, the celebrated woman who loosed my zone to one man alone.

§ 7.325  ANONYMOUS On Sardanapallus
I have all I ate and drank and the delightful things I learnt with the Loves, but all my many and rich possessions I left behind.

§ 7.326  CRATES OF THEBES
I have all I got by study and by thought and the grave things I learnt with the Muses, but all my many and rich possessions Vanity seized on.

§ 7.327  Anonymous on Cassandros the beautiful, buried at Larissa
Do not thou, being mortal, reckon on anything as if thou wert immortal, for nothing in life is certain for men, the children of a day. See how this sarcophagus holds Cassandros dead, a man worthy of an immortal nature.

§ 7.328  ANONYMOUS on the same
What stone did not shed tears at thy death, Cassandros, what rock shall forget thy beauty? But the merciless and envious demon slew thee aged only six and twenty, widowing thy wife and thy afflicted old parents, worn by hateful mourning.

§ 7.329  ANONYMOUS
I am Myrtas who quaffed many a generous cup of unwatered wine beside the holy vats of Dionysus, and no light layer of earth covers me, but a wine-jar, the token of my merrymaking, rests on me, a pleasant tomb.

§ 7.330  ANONYMOUS In Dorylaeum
The sarcophagus that you see was set here by Maximus during his life for himself to inhabit after his death. He made this monument too for his wife Calepodia, that thus among the dead too he might have her love.

§ 7.331  ANONYMOUS At Oraca in Phrygia
This tomb was given me by my husband Phroures, a reward worthy of my piety. In my husband’s house I leave a fair-famed company of children, to bear faithful testimony to my virtue. I die the wife of one husband, and still live in ten living beings, having enjoyed the fruit of prolific wedlock.

§ 7.332  ANONYMOUS At Acmonia
I had an unhappy end, for I was a rearer of animals and Bacche slew me, not in a race on the course, but during the training for which I was renowned.

§ 7.333  ANONYMOUS At Hadriani in Phrygia
Mother, not even there with the infernal deities shouldest thou be without a share of the gifts it is meet we should give thee. Therefore have I, Nicomachus, and thy daughter Dione erected this tomb and pillar for thy sake.

§ 7.334  ANONYMOUS Found at Cyzicus
Cruel fate, why didst thou show me the light for the brief measure of a few years? Was it to vex my unhappy mother with tears and lamentations owing to my death? She it was who bore me and reared me and took much more pains than my father in my education. For he left me an orphan in his house when I was but a tiny child, but she toiled all she could for my sake. My desire was to distinguish myself in speaking in the courts before our righteous magistrates, but it did not fall to her to welcome the first down on my chin, herald of lovely prime, nor my marriage torches; she never sang the solemn bridal hymn for me, nor looked, poor woman, upon a child of mine who would keep the memory of our lamented race alive. Yea, even in death it grieves me sore, the ever-growing sorrow of my mother Politta as she mourns and thinks of her Fronto, she who bore him short-lived, an empty delight of our dear country.

§ 7.335  ANONYMOUS
A. "POLITTA, support thy grief and still thy tears; many mothers have seen their sons dead." B. "But not such as he was in character and life, not so reverencing their mother's dearest face." A. "Why mourn in vain, why this idle lamentation? All men shall come to Hades."

§ 7.336  ANONYMOUS
Worn by age and poverty, no one stretching out his hand to relieve my misery, on my tottering legs I went slowly to my grave, scarce able to reach the end of my wretched life. In my case the law of death was reversed, for I did not die first to be then buried, but I died after my burial.

§ 7.337  ANONYMOUS
Do not, most noble wayfarer, pass by the tomb hurrying on thy way with tireless feet, but look on it, and· ask "Who art thou, and whence?" So shalt thou know Harmonia whose family is illustrious in Megara. For in her one could observe
all things which bring fame to men, a loveable nobility, a gentle character and virtue. Such was she whose tomb you look on; her soul putting off the body strives to gain the paths of heaven.

§ 7.338  ANONYMOUS
Here stand I, O Pericles, son of Archias, the stone stele, a record of thy chase. All are carved about thy monument; thy horses, darts, dogs, stakes and the nets on them. Alas! they are all of stone; the wild creatures run about free, but thou aged only twenty sleepest the sleep from which there is no awakening.

§ 7.339  ANONYMOUS (Not Sepulchral)
It was not for any sin of mine that I was born of my parents. I was born, poor wretch, and I journey towards Hades. Oh death-dealing union of my parents! Oh for the necessity which will lead me to dismal death! From nothing I was bora, and again I shall be nothing as at first. Nothing, nothing is the race of mortals. Therefore make the cup bright, my friend, and give me wine the consoler of sorrow.

§ 7.340  ANONYMOUS Found in Thessalonica
Marathonis laid Nicopolis in this sarcophagus, bedewing the marble chest with tears. But it profited him naught. What is left but sorrow for a man alone in the world, his wife gone?

§ 7.341  PROCLUS
I am Proclus of Lycia, whom Syrianus educated here to be his successor in the school. This our common tomb received the bodies of both, and would that one place might receive our spirits too.

§ 7.342  ANONYMOUS
I am dead, but await thee, and thou too shalt await another. One Hades receives all mortals alike.

§ 7.343  ANONYMOUS
The tomb possesses Paterius, sweet-spoken and loveable, the dear son of Miltiades and sorrowing Atticia, a child of Athens of the noble race of the Aeacidae, full of knowledge of Roman law and of all wisdom, endowed with the brilliance of all the four virtues, a young man of charm, whom Fate carried off, even as the whirlwind uproots a beautiful sapling. He was in his twenty-fourth year and left to his dear parents undying lament and mourning.

§ 7.344a  SIMONIDES
I am the most valiant of beasts, and most valiant of men is he whom I guard standing on this stone tomb.

§ 7.344b  CALLIMACHUS
Never, unless Leo had had my courage and strength would I have set foot on this tomb.

§ 7.345  ANONYMOUS
I Philainis, celebrated among men, have been laid to rest here, by extreme old age. Thou silly sailor, as thou roundest the cape, make no sport and mockery of me; insult me not. For by Zeus I swear and the Infernal Lords I was not lascivious with men or a public woman; but Polycrates the Athenian, a cozener in speech and an evil tongue, wrote whatever he wrote; for I know not what it was.

§ 7.346  ANONYMOUS In Corinth
This little stone, good Sabinus, is a memorial of our great friendship. I shall ever miss thee; and if so it may be, when with the dead thou drinkest of Lethe, drink not thou forgetfulness of me.

§ 7.347  ANONYMOUS
This is the tomb of that Adeimantus through whose counsel Greece put on the crown of freedom.

§ 7.348  SIMONIDES
Here I lie, Timocreon of Rhodes, after drinking much and eating much and speaking much ill of men.

§ 7.349  ANONYMOUS
After eating little and drinking little and suffering much sickness I lasted long, but at length I did die. A curse on you all!

§ 7.350  ANONYMOUS
Ask not, sea-farer, whose tomb I am, but thyself chance upon a kinder sea.

§ 7.351  DIOSCORIDES
Not, by this, the solemn oath of the dead, did we daughters of Lycambes, who have gotten such an evil name, ever disgrace our maidenhead or our parents or Paros, queen of the holy islands; but Archilochus poured on our family a flood of horrible reproach and evil report. By the gods and demons we swear that we never set eyes on Archilochus, either in the streets or in Hera’s great precinct. If we had been wanton and wicked, he would never have wished lawful children born to him by us.

§ 7.352  ANONYMOUS, BY SOME ATTRIBUTED TO MELEAGER
We swear by the right hand of Hades and the dark couch of Persephone whom none may name, that we are truly virgins even here under ground; but bitter Archilochus poured floods of abuse on our maidenhood, directing to no noble end but to war with women the noble language of his verse. Ye Muses, why to do favour to an impious man, did ye turn upon girls those scandalous iambics?

§ 7.353  ANTIPATER OF SIDON
This is the monument of grey-haired Maronis, on whose tomb you see a wine cup carved in stone. She the wine-bibber and chatterer, is not sorry for her children or her children’s destitute father, but one thing she laments even in her grave, that the device of the wine-god on the tomb is not full of wine.

§ 7.354  GAETULICUS
This is the tomb of Medea’s children, whom her burning jealousy made the victims of Glauce’s wedding. To them the Corinthian land ever sends peace-offerings, propitiating their mother’s implacable soul.

§ 7.355  DAMAGETUS
Bid good Praxiteles "hail," ye passers-by, that cheering and honouring word. He was well gifted by the Muses and a jolly after-dinner companion.
Hail, Praxiteles of Andros!

§ 7.356  ANONYMOUS
On one who was killed by a robber and then buried by him
You robbed me of my life, and then you give me a tomb. But you hide me, you don’t bury me. May you have the benefit of such a tomb yourself!

§ 7.357  THOUGH you hide me as if no one saw you, the eye of Justice sees all that happens.

§ 7.358  Wretch! you killed and then buried me with those hands that slew me. May you not escape Nemesis.

§ 7.359  If you had found me dead and buried me out of pity, the gods would have rewarded you for your piety. But now that you who slew me hide me in a tomb, may you meet with the same treatment that I met with at your hands.

§ 7.360  Having killed me with your hands you build me a tomb, not to bury me, but to hide me. May you meet with the same fate!

§ 7.361  ANONYMOUS: THE father erects this tomb to his son. The reverse had been just, but Envy was quicker than Justice.

§ 7.362  PHILIPPUS OF THESSALONICA
Here the sarcophagus holds the holy head of good Aetius, the distinguished orator. To the house of Hades went his body, but his soul in Olympus rejoices with Zeus and the other gods.

§ 7.363  ANONYMOUS
This tomb of polished metal covers the body of the great hero Zenodotus; but his soul has found in heaven, where Orpheus and Plato are, a holy seat fit to receive a god. He was a valiant knight in the Emperor’s service, famous, eloquent, god-like; in his speech he was a Latin copy of Socrates. Bequeathing to his children a handsome fortune, he died while still a vigorous old man, leaving infinite sorrow to his noble friends, city and citizens.

§ 7.364  MARCUS ARGENTARIUS
Myro made this tomb for her grasshopper and cicada, sprinkling a little dust over them both and weeping regretfully over their pyre; for the songster was seized by Hades and the other by Persephone.

§ 7.365  ZONAS OF SARDIS, ALSO CALLED DIODORUS
Dark Charon, who through the water of this reedy lake rowest the boat of the dead to Hades . . . reach out thy hand from the mounting-ladder to the son of Cinyras as he embarks, and receive him; for the boy cannot walk steadily in his sandals, and he fears to set his bare feet on the sand of the beach.

§ 7.366  ANTISTIUS
To thee, Menestratus, the mouth of the Aous was fatal; to thee, Menander, the tempest of the Carpathian Sea; and thou, Dionysius, didst perish at sea in the Sicilian Strait. Alas, what grief to Hellas! the best of all her winners in the games gone.

§ 7.367  ANTIPATER OF THESSALONICA
Say that I am the corpse of Italian Egerius whose eyes when he went to meet his bride were veiled by a dim cloud, which extinguished his life together with his eyesight, after he had but seen the girl. Alas, O Sun, that heaven allotted him such a fate! Cursed be that envious wedding torch, whether unwilling Hymen lit or willing Hades.

§ 7.368  ERYCIUS
I am a woman of Athens, for that is my birthplace, but the destroying sword of the Italians long ago took me captive at Athens and made me a citizen of Rome, and now that I am dead island Cyzicus covers my bones. Hail ye three lands, thou which didst nourish me, thou to which my lot took me afterwards and thou that didst finally receive me in thy bosom.

§ 7.369  ANTIPATER OF THESSALONICA
I am the tomb of the orator Antipater. Ask all Greece to testify to his inspiration. He lies here, and men dispute whether his birth was from Athens or from Egypt; but he was worthy of both continents. For the matter of that, the lands are of one blood, as Greek legend says, but the one is ever allotted to Pallas and the other to Zeus.

§ 7.370  DIODORUS
Menander of Athens, the son of Diopeithes, the friend of Bacchus and the Muses, rests beneath me, or at least the little dust he shed in the funeral fire. But if thou seekest Menander himself thou shalt find him in the abode of Zeus or in the Islands of the Blest.

§ 7.371  CRINAGORAS
Earth was my mother’s name, and earth too covers me now I am dead. No worse is this earth than the other: in this I shall lie for long, but from my mother the violent heat of the sun snatched me away and in a strange earth I lie under a stone, Inachus, the much bewept and the obedient servant of Crinagoras.

§ 7.372  LOLLIUS BASSUS
Earth of Tarentum, keep gently this body of a good man. How false are the guardian divinities of mortal men! Atymnius, coming from Thebes, got no further, but settled under thy soil. He left an orphan son, whom his death deprived, as it were, of his eyes. Lie not heavy upon the stranger.

§ 7.373  THALLUS OF MILETUS
Two shining lights, Miletus, sprung from thee, doth the Italian earth cover, dead each ere his prime. Thou hast put on mourning instead of garlands, and thou seeest, alas, their remains hidden in a little urn. Alack, thrice unhappy country! Whence and when shalt thou have again two such stars to boast of, shedding their light on Greece?

§ 7.374  MARCUS ARGENTARIUS
My ill-fated body was covered by the sea, and beside the waves my mother, Lysidice, wept for me much, gazing at my false and empty tomb, while my evil genius sent my lifeless corpse to be tossed with the sea-gulls on the deep. My name was Pnytagoras and I met my fate on the Aegean, when taking in the stem cables because of the north-wind. Yet not even so did I end my voyage, but from my ship I embarked on another boat among the dead.

§ 7.375  ANTIPHILUS OF BYZANTIUM (Not sepulchral)
My house collapsed with the earthquake; yet my chamber remained erect, as its walls stood the shock. There while I lay, as if hiding in a cave, the unhappy labour-pains overtook me, and another dread was mingled with that of the earthquake. Nature herself was the midwife, and the child and I both together saw the sun above the earth.

§ 7.376  CRINAGORAS
Unhappy men! why do we wander confiding in empty hopes, oblivious of painful death? Here was this Seleucus so perfect in speech and character; but after enjoying his prime but for a season, in Spain, at the end of the world, so far from Lesbos, he lies a stranger on that uncharted coast.

§ 7.377  ERYCIUS
Even though he lies under earth, still pour pitch on foul-mouthed Parthenius, because he vomited on the Muses those floods of bile, and the filth of his repulsive elegies. So far gone was he in madness that he called the Odyssey mud and the Iliad a bramble. Therefore he is bound by the dark Furies in the middle of Cocytus, with a dog-collar that chokes him round his neck.

§ 7.378  APOLLONIDES
Hemodokus went first, and in even less than an hour his wife, Diogenia, followed her dear husband. Both, even as they dwelt together, are interred under one stone, happy to share one tomb, as erst to share one chamber

§ 7.379  ANTIPHILUS OF BYZANTIUM (Not Sepulchral)
A. "TELL me, Dicaearchia, why thou hast built thee so vast a mole in the sea, reaching out to the middle of the deep? They were Cyclopes’ hands that planted such walls in the sea. How long, O Land, shalt thou do violence to us?" B. "I can receive the navies of the world. Look at Rome hard by; is not my harbour as great as she?"

§ 7.380  CRINAGORAS
Though the monument be of Parian marble, and polished by the mason’s straight rule, it is not a good man’s. Do not, good sir, estimate the dead by the stone. The stone is senseless and can cover a foul black corpse as well as any other. Here lies that weak rag the body of Eunicides and rots under the ashes.

§ 7.381  ETRUSCUS OF MESSENE
The same boat, a double task exacted of it, carried Hieroclides to his living and into Hades. It fed him by his fishing, and it burnt him dead, travelling with him to the chase and travelling with him to Hades. Indeed the fisherman was very well off, as he sailed the seas in his own ship and raced to Hades by means of his own ship.

§ 7.382  PHILIPPUS OF THESSALONICA
Thou gavest me up dead to the land, cruel sea, and now thou earnest off the little remnant of my ashes. I alone am shipwrecked even in Hades, and not even on land shall I cease to be dashed on the dreadful rocks. Either bury me, hiding (?) me in thy waters, or if thou givest me up to the land, steal not a corpse that now belongs to the land.

§ 7.383  PHILIPPUS OF THESSALONICA
Look on this corpse of a most unhappy man scattered on the beach shredded by the sea-dashed rocks. Here lies the hairless and toothless head and here the five fingers of a hand, here the fleshless ribs, the feet without their sinews and the disjointed legs. This man of many parts once was one. Blest indeed are those who were never born to see the sun!

§ 7.384  MARCUS ARGENTARIUS
Old Aristomache the talkative friend of the vine, who loved Bacchus much more than did his nurse Ino, when she went under holy earth, and the spirit of her who had enjoyed so many a cup had utterly faded, said "Shake, Minos, the light urn. I will fetch the dark water from Acheron; for I too slew a young husband."This falsehood she told in order that even among the dead she should be able to look at a jar.

§ 7.385  PHILIPPUS
Hero Protesilaus, for that thou didst first initiate Ilion into looking on the wrath of Grecian spears, the tall trees also that grow round thy tomb are all big with hatred of Troy. If from their topmost branches they see Ilion, they wither and cast off the beauty of their foliage. How great was thy boiling wrath against Troy, if tree-trunks preserve the spite thou didst bear thy foes.

§ 7.386  BASSUS LOLLIUS
Here am I, Niobe, as many times a stone (sic) as I was a mother; so unhappy was I that the milk in my breast grew hard. Great wealth for Hades was the number of my children — to Hades for whom I brought them forth. Oh relics of that great pyre

§ 7.387  BIANOR
I wept the death of my Theonoe, but the hopes I had of our child lightened my grief. But now envious fate has bereft me of the boy too. Alas my child, all that was left to me, I am cheated of thee! Persephone, give ear to the prayer of a mourning father, and lay the child in the bosom of its dead mother.

§ 7.388  BIANOR
The hostile crowd threw Clitonymus to the fish and the river when he came to the castle to kill the tyrant. But Justice buried him, for the bank falling in honoured with funeral his whole body from head to foot, and he lies unwetted by the water, the earth in reverence covering him, her haven of freedom.

§ 7.389  APOLLONIDES
Who is there that has not suffered the extremity of woe, weeping for a son? But the house of Posidippus buried all four, taken from him in four days by death, that cut short all his hopes of them. The father’s mourning eyes drenched with tears have lost their sight, and one may say that a common night now holds them all.

§ 7.390  ANTIPATER OF THESSALONICA
You have heard of Cyllene the Arcadian mountain. That is the monument that covers Apollodorus. As he journeyed from Pisa by night the thunderbolt from Zeus killed him; and far from Aeanae and Beroea the racer sleeps, conquered by Zeus.

§ 7.391  BASSUS LOLLIUS
Ye janitors of the dead, block all the roads of Hades, and be bolted, ye entrance doors. I myself, Hades, order it. Germanicus belongs to the stars, not to me; Acheron has no room for so great a ship.

§ 7.392  HERACLIDES OF SINOPE
The gale and great waves and the tempestuous rising of Arcturus and the darkness and the evil swell of the Aegean, all these dashed my ship to pieces, and the mast broken in three plunged me in the depths together with my cargo. Weep on the shore, parents, for your shipwrecked Tlesimenes, erecting a cenotaph.

§ 7.393  DIOCLES OF CARYSTUS
Cover me not with dust again. What avails it? Nor continue to put on me the guiltless earth of this strand. The sea is furious with me and discovers me, wretched man, even on the surf-beaten land: even in Hades it knows me. If it is the will of the waves to mount on the land for my sake, I prefer to remain on the firm land thus unburied.

§ 7.394  PHILIPPUS OF THESSALONICA
The miller possessed me also during his life, the deep-voiced revolving stone, the wheat-crushing servant of fertile Demeter, and on his death he set me up on this tomb, an emblem of his calling. So he finds me ever heavy, in his work while he lived, and now he is dead, on his bones.

§ 7.395  MARCUS ARGENTARIUS
This is the cenotaph of Callaeschrus, whom the deep undid as he was crossing the Libyan main, then when the force of Orion at the stormy season of his baneful setting stirred the sea from its depths. The sea-monsters devoured his wave-tossed corpse, and the stone bears but this empty inscription.

§ 7.396  BIANOR OF BITHYNIA
Thebes is the tomb of the sons of Oedipus, but the all-destroying tomb feels their still living quarrel. Not even Hades subdued them, and by Acheron they still fight; even their tombs are foes and they dispute still on their funeral pyres. O children much to be pitied, who grasped spears never to be laid to rest.

§ 7.397  ERYCIUS OF THESSALY
This is not the tomb of poor Satyrus; Satyrus sleeps not, as they tell, under the ashes of this pyre. But perchance ye have heard of a sea somewhere, the bitter sea that beats on the shore near Mycale where the wild-goats feed, and in that eddying and desert water yet I lie, reproaching furious Boreas.

§ 7.398  ANTIPATER OF THESSALONICA
I know not whether to blame Bacchus or the rain; both are treacherous for the feet. For this tomb holds Polyxenus who once, returning from the country after a banquet, fell from the slippery hill-side. Far from Aeolian Smyrna he lies. Let everyone at night when drunk dread the rain-soaked path.

§ 7.399  ANTIPHILUS
Far from each other should the tombs of Oedipus’ sons have been built, for even Hades ends not their strife. They refused even to travel in one boat to the house of Acheron, and hateful Ares lives in them even now they are dead. Look at the uneven flame of their pyre, how it separates from one into two quarrelling tongues.

§ 7.400  SERAPION OF ALEXANDRIA
This bone is that of some man who laboured much. Either wast thou a merchant or a fisher in the blind, uncertain sea. Tell to mortals that eagerly pursuing other hopes we all rest at the end in the haven of such a hope.

§ 7.401  CRINAGORAS
The tomb above his odious head crushes the bones of the scoundrel who lies in this unhappy earth; it crushes the protruding breast and the unsavoury sawlike teeth and the servilely fettered legs and hairless head, the half consumed remains of Eunicides still full of green putrescence. O earth, who hast espoused an evil bridegroom, rest not light or thinly-sprinkled on the ashes of the deformed being.

§ 7.402  ANTIPATER OF THESSALONICA
On the winter snow melting at the top of her house it fell in and killed old Lysidice. Her neighbours of the village did not make her a tomb of earth dug up for the purpose, but put her house itself over her as a tomb.

§ 7.403  MARCUS ARGENTARIUS
Psyllus, who used to take to the pleasant banquets of the young men the venal ladies that they desired, that hunter of weak girls, who earned a disgraceful wage by dealing in human flesh, lies here. But cast not thou stones at his tomb, wayfarer, nor bid another do so. He is dead and buried. Spare him, not because he was content to gain his living so, but because as keeper of common women he dissuaded young men from adultery.

§ 7.404  ZONAS OF SARDIS
On thy head 1 will heap the cold shingle of the beach, shedding it on thy cold corpse. For never did thy mother wail over thy tomb or see the sea-battered body of her shipwrecked son. But the desert and inhospitable strand of the Aegean shore received thee. So take this little portion of sand, stranger, and many a tear; for fated was the journey on which thou didst set out to trade.

§ 7.405  PHILIPPUS
Avoid, O stranger, this terrible tomb of Hipponax, which hails forth verses, Hipponax whose very ashes cry in iambics his hatred of Bupalus, lest thou wake the sleeping wasp, who not even in Hades has lulled his spite to rest, but in a halting measure launcheth straight shafts of song.

§ 7.406  THEODORIDAS
Euphorion, the exquisite writer of verse, lies by these Long Walls of the Piraeus. Offer to the initiated singer a pomegranate or apple, or myrtle-berries, for in his life he loved them.

§ 7.407  DIOSCORIDES
Sappho, who dost most sweetly pillow the loves of young men, thee verily Pieria or ivied Helicon honour together with the Muses; for thy breath is like to theirs, thou Muse of Aeolian Eresus. Either Hymen Hymenaeus bearing, his bright torch stands with thee over the bridal couch; or thou lookest on the holy grove of the Blessed, mourning in company with Aphrodite the fair young son of Cinyras. Wherever thou be, I salute thee, my queen, as divine, for we still deem thy songs to be daughters of the gods.

§ 7.408  LEONIDAS
Go quietly by the tomb, lest ye awake the malignant wasp that lies asleep; for only just has it been laid to rest, the spite of Hipponax that snarled even at his parents. Have a care then; for his verses, red from the fire, have power to hurt even in Hades.

§ 7.409  ANTIPATER OF SIDON
Praise the sturdy verse of tireless Antimachus, worthy of the majesty of the demigods of old, beaten on the anvil of the Muses, if thou art gifted with a keen ear, if thou aspirest to gravity of words, if thou wouldst pursue a path untrodden and unapproached by others. If Homer holds the sceptre of song, yet, though Zeus is greater than Poseidon, Poseidon his inferior is the chief of the immortals; so the Colophonian bows before Homer, but leads the crowd of other singers.

§ 7.410  DIOSCORIDES
I am Thespis, who first modelled tragic song, inventing a new diversion for the villagers, at the season when Bacchus led in the triennial chorus whose prize was still a goat and a basket of Attic figs. Now my juniors remodel all this; countless ages will beget many new inventions, but my own is mine.

§ 7.411  DIOSCORIDES
This invention of Thespis and the greenwood games and revels were raised to greater perfection by Aeschylus who carved letters not neatly chiselled, but as if water-worn by a torrent. In matters of the stage he was also an innovator. O mouth in every respect accomplished, thou wast one of the demigods of old!

§ 7.412  ALCAEUS OF MESSENE
Pylades, now thou art gone, all Hellas wails shearing her loosened hair, and Phoebus himself took off the laurels from his flowing locks, honouring his singer as is meet. The Muses wept and Asopus stayed his stream when he heard the voice of mourning. The dance of Dionysus ceased in the halls, when thou didst go down the iron road of Hades.

§ 7.413  ANTIPATER OF SIDON
I, Hipparchia, chose not the tasks of amply-robed woman, but the manly life of the Cynics. Nor do tunics fastened with brooches and thick-soled slippers, and the hair-caul wet with ointment please me, but rather the wallet and its fellow-traveller the staff and the course double mantle suited to them, and a bed strewn on the ground. I shall have a greater name than that of Arcadian Atalanta by so much as wisdom is better than racing over the mountains.

§ 7.414  NOSSIS
Laugh frankly as thou passest by and speak a kind word over me. I am the Syracusan Rhintho, one of the lesser nightingales of the Muses; but from my tragic burlesques I plucked for myself a special wreath of ivy.

§ 7.415  CALLIMACHUS
This is the tomb of Callimachus that thou art passing. He could sing well, and laugh well at the right time over the wine.

§ 7.416  ANONYMOUS
I hold, stranger, Meleager, son of Eucrates, who mixed the sweet-spoken Graces with Love and the Muses.

§ 7.417  MELEAGER
Island Tyre was my nurse, and Gadara, which is Attic, but lies in Syria, gave birth to me. From Eucrates I sprung, Meleager, who first by the help of the Muses ran abreast of the Graces of Menippus. If I am a Syrian, what wonder? Stranger, we dwell in one country, the world; one Chaos gave birth to all mortals. In my old age I wrote these lines in my tablets before my burial; for eld and death are near neighbours. Speak a word to wish me, the loquacious old man, well, and mayst thou reach a loquacious old age thyself.
As regards culture.
He wrote besides his epigrams satires in which he imitated Menippus.

§ 7.418  MELEAGER
My first country was famous Gadara; then Tyre received me and brought me up to manhood. When 1 reached old age, Cos, which nurtured Zeus, made me one of her Meropian citizens and cared for my declining years. But the Muses adorned me, Meleager, son of Eucrates, more than most men with the Graces of Menippus.

§ 7.419  MELEAGER
Go noiselessly by, stranger; the old man sleeps among the pious dead, wrapped in the slumber that is the lot of all. This is Meleager, the son of Eucrates, who linked sweet tearful Love and the Muses with the merry Graces. Heavenborn Tyre and Gadara’s holy soil reared him to manhood, and beloved Cos of the Meropes tended his old age. If you are a Syrian, Salam! if you are a Phoenician, Naidius! it you are a Greek, Chaire! (Hail) and say the same yourself.

§ 7.420  DIOTIMUS OF ATHENS
Ye Hopes of men, light goddesses, for never, were ye not so, had Hades, who bringeth our strength to naught, covered Lesbon, once as blest as the Great King — yea, ye Hopes and ye Loves too, lightest of all deities, farewell! And ye, the flutes he once breathed in, must lie dumb and unheard; for Acheron knoweth no troops of musicians.

§ 7.421  MELEAGER An enigmatic epitaph on himself
Thou with the wings, what pleasure hast thou in the hunting spear and boar-skin? Who art thou, and the emblem of whose tomb? For Love I cannot call thee. What! doth Desire dwell next the dead? No! the bold boy never learnt to wail. Nor yet art thou swift-footed Cronos; on the contrary, he is as old as old can be, and thy limbs are in the bloom of youth. Then — yes, I think I am right — he beneath the earth was a sophist, and thou art the winged word for which he was famed. The double-edged attribute of Artemis thou bearest in allusion to his laughter mixed with gravity and perhaps to the metre of his love verses. Yea, in truth, these symbols of boar-slaying point to his name-sake, Meleager, son of Oeneus. Hail, even among the dead, thou who didst fit together into one work of wisdom, Love, the Muses and the Graces.

§ 7.422  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
What shall we conjecture about you, Pisistratus, when we see a Chian die carved on your tomb? Shall we not say that you were a Chian? That seems probable. Or shall we say that you were a gamester and not a particularly lucky one, my friend? Or are we still far from the truth, and was your life’s light put out by Chian wine? Yes, I think now we are near it.

§ 7.423  ANTIPATER OF SIDON The jay, stranger, will tell you I was ever a woman of many words, ever talkative, and the cup The hunting spear.
that I was of a convivial habit The bow proclaims me Cretan, the wool a good workwoman, and the snood that tied up my hair shows that I was greyheaded. Such was the Bittis that this tomb with its stele covers, the wedded wife of ... . But, hail, good sir, and do us who are gone to Hades the favour to bid us hail likewise in return.

§ 7.424  By the same
A. "I seek to discover what the meaning of these carvings is that Agis made upon your stele, Lysidice. For the reins and muzzle and the bird who comes from Tanagra celebrated for its fowls, the bold awaker of battles, such are not things that please or become sedentary women, but rather the works of the spindle and the loom." B. "The bird of the night proclaims me one who rises in the night to work, the reins tell that I directed my house, and this horse's muzzle that I was not fond of many words and talkative, but full of admirable silence."

§ 7.425  By the same
Do not wonder at seeing on Myro’s tomb a whip, an owl, a bow, a grey goose and a swift bitch. The bow proclaims that I was the strict well-strung directress of my house, the bitch that I took true care of my children, the whip that I was no cruel or overbearing mistress, but a just chastiser of faults, the goose that I was a careful guardian of the house, and this owl that I was a faithful servant of owl-eyed Pallas. Such were the things in which I took delight, wherefore my husband Biton carved these emblems on my grave-stone.

§ 7.426  By the same
A. "Tell, lion, thou slayer of kine, on whose tomb thou standest there and who was worthy of thy valour." B. "Teleutias, the son of Theodorus, who was far the most valiant of men, as I am judged to be of beasts. Not in vain stand I here, but I emblem the prowess of the man, for he was indeed a lion to his enemies."

§ 7.427  By the same
Come let us see who lies under this stone. But I see no inscription cut on it, only nine cast dice, of which the first four represent the throw called Alexander, the next four that called Ephebus — the bloom of youthful maturity — and the one the more unlucky throw called Chian. Is their message this, that both the proud sceptred potentate and the young man in his flower end in nothing, or is that not so I think now like a Cretan archer I shall shoot straight at the mark. The dead man was a Chian, his name was Alexander and he died in youth. How well one told through dumb dice of the young man dead by ill-chance and the life staked and lost!

§ 7.428  MELEAGER On Antipater of Sidon
Tell me, thou stone, why does this bright-eyed cock stand on thee as an emblem, bearing a sceptre in his lustred wing and seizing in his claws the branch of victory, while cast at the very edge of the base lies a die? Dost thou cover some sceptred king victorious in battle? But why the die thy plaything? And besides, why is the tomb so simple? It would suit a poor man woke up o’nights by the crowing of the cock. But I don’t think that is right, for the sceptre tells against it. Then you cover an athlete, a winner in the foot-race? No, I don't hit it off so either, for what resemblance does a swift-footed man bear to a die? Now I have it: the palm does not mean victory, but prolific Tyre, the proud mother of palms, was the dead man’s birthplace; the cock signifies that he was a man who made himself heard, a champion too I suppose in love matters and a versatile songster. The sceptre he holds is emblematic of his speech and the die cast wide means that in his cups he fell and died. Well, these are symbols, but the stone tells us his name, Antipater, descended from most puissant ancestors·

§ 7.429  ALCAEUS OF MITYLENE
I ask myself why this road-side stone has only two phis chiselled on it. Was the name of the woman who is buried here Chilias? The number which is the sum of the two letters points to this. Or am I astray in this guess and was the name of her who dwells in this mournful tomb Phidis? Now am I the Oedipus who has solved the sphinx's riddle. He deserves praise, the man who made this puzzle out of two letters, a light to the intelligent and darkness to the unintelligent.

§ 7.430  DIOSCORIDES
Who hung the newly-stripped arms on this oak? By whom is the Dorian shield inscribed? For this land of Thyrea is soaked with the blood of champions and we are the only two left of the Argives. Seek out every fallen corpse, lest any left alive illuminate Sparta in spurious glory. Nay! stay thy steps, for here on the shield the victory of the Spartans is announced by the clots of Othryadas’ blood, and he who wrought this still gasps hard by. O Zeus our ancestor, look with loathing on those tokens of a victory that was not won.

§ 7.431  ANONYMOUS, SOME SAY BY SIMONIDES
We the three hundred, O Spartan fatherland, — fighting for Thyrea with as many Argives, never turning our necks, died there where we first planted our feet. The shield, covered with the brave blood of Othryadas proclaims "Thyrea, O Zeus, is the Lacedemonians!" But if any Argive escaped death he was of the race of Adrastus. For a Spartan to fly, not to die, is death.

§ 7.432  DAMAGETUS
O Spartans, the tomb holds your martial Gyllis who fell for Thyrea. He killed three Argives, and exclaimed, "Let me die having wrought a deed worthy of Sparta."

§ 7.433  TYMNES
His Spartan mother slew the Spartan Demetrius for transgressing the law. Bringing her sharp sword to the guard, she said, gnashing her teeth, like a Laconian woman as she was: "Perish, craven whelp, evil piece, to Hell with thee! He who is not worthy of Sparta is not my son."

§ 7.434  DIOSCORIDES
Demaeneta sent eight sons to encounter the phalanx of the foes, and she buried them all beneath one stone. No tear did she shed in her mourning, but said this only: "Ho! Sparta, I bore these children for thee."

§ 7.435  NICANDER
We the six sons of Iphicratides, Eupylidas, Eraton, Chaeris, Lycus, Agis, and Alexon fell before the wall of Messene, and our seventh brother Gylippus having burnt our bodies came home with a heavy load of ashes, a great glory to Sparta, but a great grief to Alexippa our mother. One glorious shroud wrapped us all.

§ 7.436  HEGEMON
Some stranger passing gravely by the tomb might say, "Here a thousand Spartans arrested by their valour the advance of eighty myriads of Persians, and died without turning their backs. That is Dorian discipline."

§ 7.437  PHAENNUS
Leonidas, bravest of men, thou couldst not endure to return to the Eurotas when sore pressed by the war, but in Thermopylae resisting the Persians thou didst fall reverencing the usage of thy fathers.

§ 7.438  DAMAGETUS
In thy first youth thou didst perish too, Machatas, grimly facing the Aetolians in the portion of thy lathers. It is hard to find a brave Achaean who hath survived till his hairs are grey.

§ 7.439  THEODORIDAS
Undiscerning Fate, hounding on thy pack of demons that hunt life, thus thou hast cut off from the Aeolian youth before his time Pylius the son of Agenor. Ye gods, what a man lies low, the spoil of sombre Hades!

§ 7.440  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
O TOMB, what a man was he, the dead whose bones thou dost hide in the night: O earth, what a head thou hast engulphed! Very pleasing was Aristocrates to the flaxen-haired Graces; much is his memory treasured by all. Aristocrates could converse sweetly, without a frown, and over the wine he could guide well the convivial flow of talk; and well he knew how to confer kindness on compatriots and strangers. Such, beloved earth, is the dead who is thine.

§ 7.441  ARCHILOCHUS
Great earth, thou hast beneath thee the tall pillars of Naxos, Megatimus and Aristophon.

§ 7.442  SIMONIDES
Let US ever remember the men whose tomb this is, who turned not from the battle but fell in arms before their city, defending Tegea rich in flocks, that Greece should never strip from their dead heads the crown of freedom.

§ 7.443  SIMONIDES
Once in the breasts of these men did Ares wash with red rain his long-barbed arrows. Instead of men who stood and faced the shafts this earth covers memorials of the dead, lifeless memorials of their living selves.

§ 7.444  THEAETETUS
The secretly creeping flames, on a winter night, when all were heavy with wine, consumed the great house of Antagoras. Free men and slaves together, eighty in all, perished on this fatal pyre. Their kinsmen could not separate their bones, but one common urn, one common funeral was theirs, and one tomb was erected over them. Yet readily can Hades distinguish each of them in the ashes.

§ 7.445  PERSES OF THEBES
We lie, stranger, in the rough woodland, Mantiades and Eustratus of Dyme, the sons of Echellus, rustic wood-cutters as our fathers were; and to shew our calling the woodman's axes stand on our tomb.

§ 7.446  HEGESIPPUS
The stranger is Zoilus of Hermione, but he lies buried in a foreign land, clothed in this Argive earth, which his deep-bosomed wife, her cheeks bedewed with tears, and his children, their hair close cut, heaped on him.

§ 7.447  CALLIMACHUS
The stranger was brief; so shall the verse be. I will not tell a long story "Theris Aristaeus’ son, a Cretan." For me it is too long.

§ 7.448  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
The tomb is that of Protalidas of Lycastus who was supreme in love, war, the chase and the dance. Ye judges of the under-world, yourselves Cretans, ye have taken the Cretan to your company.

§ 7.449  ANONYMOUS
Love gave to Protalidas success in the pursuit of his boy loves, Artemis in the chase, the Muse in the dance and Ares in war. Must we not call him blest, the Lycastian supreme in love and song, with the spear and the hunting-net

§ 7.450  DIOSCORIDES
The tomb is that of Samian Philaenis; but be not ashamed, Sir, to speak to me and to approach the stone. I am not she who wrote those works offensive to ladies, and who did not acknowledge Modesty to be a goddess. But I was of a chaste disposition, I swear it by my tomb, and if anyone, to shame me, composed a wanton treatise, may Time reveal his name and may my bones rejoice that I am rid of the abominable report.

§ 7.451  CALLIMACHUS
Here Saon, son of Dicon of Acanthus, sleeps the holy sleep. Say not that the good are dead.

§ 7.452  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
Remember temperate Eubulus, ye passers-by. Let us drink, we all end in the haven of Hades.

§ 7.453  CALLIMACHUS
Here Philippus laid his twelve-year-old son, Nicoteles, his great hope.

§ 7.454  CALLIMACHUS
The cup of unmixed wine drained twice straight off has run away with Erasixenus the deep drinker.

§ 7.455  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
Wine-bibbing old Maronis, the jar-drier, lies here, and on her tomb, significant to all, stands an Attic cup. She laments beneath the earth not for her husband and children whom she left in indigence, but solely because the cup is empty.

§ 7.456  DIOSCORIDES
Here lies Hiero’s nurse Silenis, who when she began to drink untempered wine never made a grievance of being offered one cup more. He laid her to rest in his fields, that she who was so fond of wine should even dead and buried be near to vats.

§ 7.457  ARISTO
The tippler Ampelis, already supporting her tottering old age on a guiding staff, was covertly abstracting from the vat the newly pressed juice of Bacchus, and about to fill a cup of Cyclopean size, but before she could draw it out her feeble hand failed her and the old woman, like a ship submerged by the waves, disappeared in the sea of wine. Euterpe erected this stone monument on her tomb near the pressing-floor of the vineyard.

§ 7.458  CALLIMACHUS
On Phrygian Aeschra, his good nurse, did Miccus while she lived bestow every comfort that soothes old age, and when she died he erected her statue, that future generations may see how he rewarded the old woman for her milk.

§ 7.459  CALLIMACHUS
Often do the daughters of Samos miss prattling Crethis who could sport so well, their sweetest workmate, never silent; but she sleeps here the sleep that is the portion of all.

§ 7.460  CALLIMACHUS
I got a little living from my possessions, never doing any wickedness or injuring any one. Dear earth, if Micylus ever consented to any evil may neither thou be light to me nor the other powers who hold me.

§ 7.461  MELEAGER
Hail earth, Mother of all! Aesigenes was never a burden to thee, and do thou too hold him without weighing heavy on him.

§ 7.462  DIONYSIUS
Satyra with child and near her time has been taken by Hades. The earth of Sidon covers her, And Tyre her country bewails her.

§ 7.463  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
This is Timoclea, this is Philo, this is Aristo, this is Timaetho, the daughters of Aristodicus,all dead in childbirth. Their father Aristodicus died after erecting this monument to them.

§ 7.464  ANTIPATER OF SIDON
Of a surety, Aretemias, when descending from the boat, thou didst set thy foot on the beach of Cocytus, carrying in thy young arms thy babe newly dead, the fair daughters of the Dorian land pitied thee in Hades and questioned thee concerning thy death; and thou, thy cheeks bedewed with tears, didst give them these mournful tidings "My dears, I brought forth twin children; one I left with Euphron my husband, and the other I bring to the dead."

§ 7.465  HERACLITUS
The earth is newly dug and on the faces of the tomb-stone wave the half-withered garlands of leaves. Let us decipher the letters, wayfarer, and learn whose smooth bones the stone says it covers. "Stranger, I am Aretemias, my country Cnidus. I was the wife of Euphro and I did not escape travail, but bringing forth twins, I left one child to guide my husband’s steps in his old age, and I took the other with me to remind me of him."

§ 7.466  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
O UNHAPPY Anticles,and I most unhappy who have laid on the pyre my only son in the bloom of his youth! At eighteen didst thou perish, my child, and I weep and bewail my old age bereft of thee. Would 1 could go to the shadowy house of Hades! Nor dawn nor the rays of the swift sun are sweet to me. Unhappy Anticles, gone to thy doom, be thou healer of my mourning by taking me away from life to thee.

§ 7.467  ANTIPATER OF SIDON
This is the lament thy mother, Artemidorus, uttered over thy tomb, bewailing thy death at twelve years of age. "All the fruit of my travail hath perished in fire and ashes, it hath perished all thy miserable father’s toil for thee, and it hath perished all the winsome delight of thee; for thou art gone to the land of the departed, from which there is no turning back or home-coming. Nor didst thou reach thy prime, my child, and in thy stead naught is left us but thy grave stone and dumb dust."

§ 7.468  MELEAGER
At eighteen, Charixenus, did thy mother dress thee in thy chlamys to offer thee, a woeful gift, to Hades. Even the very stones groaned aloud, when the young men thy mates bore thy corpse with wailing from the house. No wedding hymn, but a song of mourning did thy parents chant. Alack for the breasts that suckled thee cheated of their guerdon, alack for the travail endured in vain! O Fate, thou evil maiden, barren thou art and hast spat to the winds a mother’s love for her child. What remains but for thy companions to regret thee, for thy parents to mourn thee, and for those to whom thou wast unknown to pity when they are told of thee.

§ 7.469  CHAEREMON
Athenagores begot Eubulus, excelled by all in fate, excelling all in good report.

§ 7.470  MELEAGER
A. "TELL him who enquires, who and whose son thou art" B. "Philaulus son of Eucratides." A. "And from whence dost thou say?" B. ". .
A. "What livelihood didst thou choose when alive?"
B. "Not that from the plough nor that from ships, but that which is gained in the society of sages." A. "Didst thou depart this life from old age or from sickness?" B. "Of my own will I came to Hades, having drunk of the Cean cup." A. "Wast thou old?" B. "Yea, very old." A. "May the earth that rests on thee be light, for the life thou didst lead was in accordance with wisdom and reason."

§ 7.471  CALLIMACHUS
Cleombrotus the Ambracian saying, "Farewell, O Sun," leapt from a high wall to Hades, not that he saw any evil worthy of death, but that he had read one treatise of Plato, that on the soul.

§ 7.472  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
O MAN, infinite was the time ere thou earnest to the light, and infinite will be the time to come in Hades. What is the portion of life that remains to thee, but a pin-prick, or if there be aught tinier than a pin-prick? A little life and a sorrowful is thine; for even that little is not sweet, but more odious than death the enemy. Men built as ye are, of such a frame of bones, do ye lift yourselves up to the air and the clouds? See, man, how little use it is; for at the end of the thread a worm seated on the loosely woven vesture reduces it to a thing like a skeleton leaf, a thing more loathly than a cobweb. Enquire of thyself at the dawn of every day, O man, what thy strength is and learn to lie low, content with a simple life; ever remembering in thy heart, as long as thou dwellest among the living, from what stalks of straw thou art pieced together.

§ 7.472b  By the same
Avoid the storms of life and hie ye to the haven, to Hades, as 1, Pheidon the son of Critas, did.

§ 7.473  ARISTODICUS
Demo and Methymna when they heard that Euphron, the frenzied devotee at the triennial festivals of Hera, was dead, refused to live longer, and made of their long knitted girdles nooses for their necks to hang themselves.

§ 7.474  ANONYMOUS
This single tomb holds all Nicander’s children; the dawn of one day made an end of the holy offspring of Lysidice.

§ 7.475  DIOTIMUS
Scyllis the daughter of Polyaenus went to her father-in-law's, lamenting, as she entered the wide gates, the death of her bridegroom, Evagoras the son of Hegemachus, who dwelt there. She came not back, poor widowed girl, to her father's house, but within three months she perished, her spirit wasted by deadly melancholy. This tearful memorial of their love stands on the tomb of both beside the smooth high-way.

§ 7.476  MELEAGER
Tears, the last gift of my love, even down through the earth I send to thee in Hades, Heliodora — tears ill to shed, and on thy much-wept tomb I pour them in memory of longing, in memory of affection.
Piteously, piteously doth Meleager lament for thee who art still dear to him in death, paying a vain tribute to Acheron. Alas! Alas! Where is my beautiful one, my heart's desire? Death has taken her, has taken her, and the flower in full bloom is defiled by the dust. But Earth my mother, nurturer of all, I beseech thee, clasp her gently to thy bosom, her whom all bewail.

§ 7.477  TYMNES
Let not this, Philaenis, weigh on thy heart, that the earth in which it was thy fate to lie is not beside the Nile, but that thou art laid in this tomb at Eleutherna. From no matter where the road is the same to Hades.

§ 7.478  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
Who ever canst thou be? Whose poor bones are these that remain exposed beside the road in a coffin half open to the light, the mean tomb and monument ever scraped by the axle and wheel of the traveller's coach? Soon the carriages will crush thy ribs, poor wretch, and none to shed a tear for thee.

§ 7.479  THEODORIDES
I, the stone coffin that contain the head of Heraclitus, was once a rounded and unworn cylinder, but Time has worn me like the shingle, for I lie in the road, the highway for all sorts and conditions of men. I announce to mortals, although I have no stele, that I hold the divine dog who used to bark at the commons.

§ 7.480  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
Already, Sirrah, my bones and the slab that lies on my skeleton are exposed and crushed, already the worms are visible, looking out of my coffin. What avails it to clothe ourselves with earth; for men travelling over my head have opened here a road untrodden before. But I conjure you by the infernal powers, Pluto, Hermes and Night, keep clear of this path.

§ 7.481  PHILETAS OF SAMOS
The grave-stone heavy with grief says "Death has carried away short-lived little Theodota," and the little one says again to her father, "Theodotus, cease to grieve; mortals are often unfortunate."

§ 7.482  ANONYMOUS
Not yet had thy hair been cut, Cleodicus, nor had the moon yet driven her chariot for thrice twelve periods across the heaven, when Nicasis thy mother and thy father Periclitus, on the brink of thy lamented tomb, poor child, wailed much over thy coffin. In unknown Acheron, Cleodicus, shalt thou bloom in a youth that never, never may return here.

§ 7.483  ANONYMOUS
Hades, inexorable and unbending, why hast thou robbed baby Callaeschron of life? In the house of Persephone the boy shall be her plaything, but at home he leaves bitter suffering.

§ 7.484  DIOSCORIDES
Five daughters and five sons did Bio bear to Didymon, but she got no joy from one of either. Bio herself so excellent and a mother of such fine babes, was not buried by her children, but by strange hands.

§ 7.485  DIOSCORIDES
Cast white lilies on the tomb and beat by the stele of Aleximenes the drums he used to love; whirl your long flowing locks, ye Thyiades, in freedom by the city on the Strymon, whose people often danced to the tender strains of his flute that breathed sweetly on your [...].

§ 7.486  ANYTE
Often on this her daughter’s tomb did Cleina call on her dear short-lived child in wailing tones, summoning back the soul of Philaenis, who ere her wedding passed across the pale stream of Acheron.

§ 7.487  PERSES OF MACEDONIA
Thou didst die before thy marriage, Philaenion, nor did thy mother Pythias conduct thee to the chamber of the bridegroom who awaited thy prime: but wretchedly tearing her cheeks, she laid thee in this tomb at the age of fourteen.

§ 7.488  MNASALCAS
Alas! Aristocrateia, thou art gone to deep Acheron, gone to rest before thy prime, before thy marriage; and naught but tears is left for thy mother, who reclining on thy tomb often bewails thee.

§ 7.489  SAPPHO
This is the dust of Timas, whom, dead before her marriage, the dark chamber of Persephone received. When she died, all her girl companions with newly sharpened steel shore their lovely locks.

§ 7.490  ANYTE
I bewail virgin Antibia, eager to wed whom came many suitors to her father’s house, led by the report of her beauty and discretion; but destroying Fate, in the case of all, sent their hopes rolling far away.

§ 7.491  MNASALCAS
Woe worth baleful virginity, for which, delightful Cleo, thou didst cut short thy bright youth 1 We stones in the semblance of Sirens stand on thy tomb tearing our cheeks for thee and weeping.

§ 7.492  ANYTE OF MITYLENE (?)
We leave thee, Miletus, dear fatherland, refusing the lawless love of the impious Gauls, three maidens, thy citizens, whom the sword of the Celts forced to this fate. We brooked not the unholy union nor such a wedding, but we put ourselves in the wardship of Hades.

§ 7.493  ANTIPATER OF THESSALONICA
I, Rhodope, and my mother Boisca neither died of sickness, nor fell by the sword of the foes, but ourselves, when dreadful Ares burnt the city of Corinth our country, chose a brave death. My mother slew me with the slaughtering knife, nor did she, unhappy woman, spare her own life, but tied the noose round her neck; for it was better than slavery to die in freedom.

§ 7.494  ANONYMOUS
In the sea, Nereus, died Sodamus the Cretan who loved thy nets and was at home on these thy waters. He excelled all men in his skill as a fisher, but the sea in a storm makes no distinction between fishermen and others.

§ 7.495  ALCAEUS OF MESSENE
Arcturus’ rising is an ill season for sailors to sail at, and I, Aspasius, whose tomb thou passest, traveller, met my bitter fate by the blast of Boreas. My body, washed by the waters of the Aegean main, is lost at sea. Lamentable ever is the death of young men, but most mournful of all is the fate of travellers who perish in the sea.

§ 7.496  SIMONIDES
Lofty Gerania, evil cliff, would that from the far Scythian land thou didst look down on the Danube and the long course of the Tanais, and didst not dwell near the waves of the Scironian sea and by the ravines of snowy Methurias. Now he is in the sea, a cold corpse, and the empty tomb here laments his unhappy voyage.

§ 7.497  DAMAGETUS
Thymodes too, on a time, weeping for his unexpected sorrow built this empty tomb for his son Lycus; for not even does he lie under foreign earth, but some Bithynian strand, some island of the Black Sea holds him. There he lies, without funeral, showing his bare bones on the inhospitable shore.

§ 7.498  ANTIPATER OF SIDON
Damis of Nysa once navigating a small vessel from the Ionian Sea to the Peloponnesus, brought safe and sound to land the ship with all on board, which the waves and winds had swept out of its course; but just as they were casting anchor on the rocks the old man died from the chilling snow-storm, having fallen asleep. Mark, stranger, how having found a sweet haven for others, he himself entered the haven of Lethe.

§ 7.499  THEAETETUS
Ye sailors on the sea, Aristo of Cyrene prays you all by Zeus the Protector of strangers to tell his father Meno that he lost his life in the Aegean main, and lies by the rocks of Icaria.

§ 7.500  ASCLEPIADES
Wayfarer who passest by my empty tomb, when thou comest to Chios tell my father Melesagoras that the evil south-easter destroyed me, my ship, and my merchandise, and naught but the name of Euippus is left.

§ 7.501  PERSES
The wintry blasts of the east wind cast thee out naked, Phillis, on the surf-beaten shore beside a spur of Lesbos rich in wine, and thou liest on the sea-bathed foot of the lofty cliff.

§ 7.502  NICAENETUS
I am the tomb, traveller, of Bito, and if leaving Torone thou comest to Amphipolis, tell Nicagoras that the Strymonian wind at the setting of the Kids was the death of his only son.

§ 7.503  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
A. "O stone standing a burden on the ancient beach, tell me whom thou holdest, whose son and whence?" B. "Phinto the son of Bathycles of Hermione, who perished in the heavy sea, encountering the blast of Arcturus."

§ 7.504  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
Parmis, Callignotus’ son, the shore-fisher, a first class hand at catching wrasse and scaros and the perch, greedy seizer of the bait, and all fish that live in crevices and on rocky bottoms, met his death by biting a rock-dwelling iulis from his first catch of the day, a fish he lifted from the sea for his destruction; for slipping from his fingers, it went wriggling down his narrow gullet. So breathed he his last, rolling over in agony, near his lines, rod, and hooks, fulfilling the doom the destinies spun for him, and Gripo the fisherman built him this tomb.

§ 7.505   SAPPHO
His father, Meniscus, placed on Pelagon’s tomb a weel and oar, a memorial of the indigent life he led.

§ 7.506  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
I am buried both on land and in the sea; this is the exceptional fate of Tharsys, son of Charmides. For diving to loosen the anchor, which had become fixed, I descended into the Ionian sea; the anchor I saved, but as I was returning from the depths and already reaching out my hands to the sailors, I was eaten; so terrible and great a monster of the deep came and gulped me down as far as the navel. The half of me, a cold burden, the sailors drew from the sea, but the shark bit off the other half. On this beach, good Sir, they buried the vile remains of Tharsys, and I never came home to my country.

§ 7.507a  SIMONIDES
Thou seest not the grave of Croesus, but a poor labourer’s tomb is this, yet sufficient for me.

§ 7.507b  SIMONIDES
I, Gorgippus, without having looked on the bridal bed, descended to the chamber that none may escape of fair-haired Persephone.

§ 7.508  SIMONIDES
His city Gela buried here Pausanias, son of Anchites, a physician of the race of Asclepius, bearing a name expressive of his calling, who turned aside from the chambers of Persephone many men wasted by chilling disease.

§ 7.509  SIMONIDES
I am the monument of Theognis of Sinope, erected over him by Glaucus for the sake of their long companionship.

§ 7.510  SIMONIDES
The earth of a strange land lies on thy body, Cleisthenes, but the doom of death overtook thee wandering on the Euxine sea. Thou wast cheated of sweet, honied home-coming, nor ever didst thou return to sea-girt Chios.

§ 7.511  SIMONIDES
When I look on the tomb of Megacles dead, I pity thee, poor Callias, for what thou hast suffered.
Stiller of pain.

§ 7.512  SIMONIDES
Through the valour of these men the smoke of spacious Tegea in flames never went up to heaven. They resolved to leave to their children their city prospering in freedom and to die themselves in the forefront of the fight.

§ 7.513  SIMONIDES
Protomachus said, when his father was holding him in his arms as he breathed forth his lovely youth, "Timenorides, never shalt thou cease to regret thy dear son's valour and virtue."

§ 7.514  SIMONIDES
Shame of retreat led Cleodemus, too, to mournful death when on the banks of ever-flowing Theaerus he engaged the Thracian troop, and his warrior son made the name of his father, Diphilus, famous.

§ 7.515  SIMONIDES
Alas, cruel sickness, why dost thou grudge the souls of men their sojourn with lovely youth? Timarchus, too, in his youth thou hast robbed of his sweet life ere he looked on a wedded wife.

§ 7.516  SIMONIDES
Zeus, Protector of strangers, let them who slew me meet with the same fate, but may they who laid me in earth live and prosper.

§ 7.517  CALLIMACHUS
It was morning when we buried Melanippus, and at sunset the maiden Basilo died by her own hand; for after laying her brother on the pyre she could not abide to live. The house of their father Aristippus witnessed a double woe, and all Cyrene stood with downcast eyes, seeing the home bereft of its lovely children.

§ 7.518  CALLIMACHUS
A nymph from the mountains carried off Astacides the Cretan goat-herd, and now Astacides is holy.
No more, ye shepherds, beneath the oaks of Dicte shall we sing of Daphnis, but ever of Astacides.

§ 7.519  CALLIMACHUS
Who knows well to-morrow’s fate, when thee, Charmis, who wast yesterday in our eyes, we bewailed and buried next day. Thy father Diophon never looked upon any more grievous thing.

§ 7.520  CALLIMACHUS
If thou wouldst seek Timarchus in Hades to enquire anything about the soul, or about how it shall be with thee hereafter, ask for Pausanias’ son of the tribe Ptolemais, and it is in the abode of the pious that thou shalt find him.

§ 7.521  CALLIMACHUS
If thou comest to Cyzicus, it will be little trouble to find Hippacus and Didyme; for the family is by no means obscure. Then give them this message, grievous indeed, but fail not to give it, that I hold their Critias.

§ 7.522  CALLIMACHUS
Timonoe! But who art thou? By heaven I would not have recognised thee, had not thy father’s name Timotheus and thy city’s Methymna stood on the grave-stone. I know of a truth that thy widowed husband Euthymenes is in sore distress.

§ 7.523  CALLIMACHUS
Ye who pass by the monument of Cimon of Elis, know that it is Hippaeus’ son whom ye pass by.

§ 7.524  CALLIMACHUS
A. "DOTH Charidas rest beneath thee?" B. "If it is the son of Arimmas of Cyrene that you mean, he does." A. "What is it like below, Charidas?" C. "Very dark." A. "And what about return?" C. "All lies." A. "And Pluto?" C. "A myth."
A. "I am done for." C. "This is the truth that I tell you, but if you want to hear something agreeable, a large ox in Hades costs a shilling." (?)

§ 7.525  CALLIMACHUS
Know thou who passest my monument that I am the son and father of Callimachus of Cyrene. Thou wilt have heard of both; the one once held the office of general in his city and the other sang songs which overcame envy. No marvel, for those on whom the Muses did not look askance in boyhood they do not cast off when they are grey.

§ 7.526  NICANDER OF COLOPHON O FATHER Zeus, didst thou ever see a braver than Othryadas, who would not return alone from Thyrea to Sparta his country, but transfixed himself with his sword after having inscribed the trophy signifying the subjection of the Argives.

§ 7.527  THEODORIDAS
Theodotus, cause of many tears to thy kinsmen, who lamented thee dead, lighting the mournful pyre, ill-fated, dead all too early, instead of joy in thy marriage and thy youth, to thy sweet mother is left but groaning and grief.

§ 7.528  THEODORIDAS
The daughters of Thessaly sheared their yellow locks at the spacious tomb of Phaenarete, distraught with grief for the luckless bride dead in her first childbed, and her dear Larissa and her parents were stricken with sorrow.

§ 7.529  THEODORIDAS
Daring leads a man to Hades and to heaven; daring laid Dorotheus, Sosander’s son, on the pyre; for winning freedom for Phthia he was smitten midway between Sekoi and Chimera.

§ 7.530  ANTIPATER OF THESSALONICA On Niobe and her children
Thou ferry-man of the dead, receive me, who could not hold my tongue, alone with my children; a boat-load from the house of Tantalus is sufficient for thee. One womb shall fill thy boat; look on my boys and girls, the spoils of Phoebus and Artemis.

§ 7.531  By the same
The very mother who bore thee, Demetrius, gave thee death when forgetful of thy duty thou didst fly, driving the sword into thy flanks. Holding the steel that reeked with her son’s blood, gnashing her teeth, foaming at the mouth, and looking askance like a Spartan woman as she was, she exclaimed "Leave the Eurotas; go to Tartarus. Since thou couldst fly like a coward, thou art neither mine nor Sparta's."

§ 7.532  ISIDORUS OF AEGAE
I am Eteocles whom the hopes of the sea drew from husbandry and made a merchant in place of what I was by nature. I was travelling on the surface of the Tyrrhenian Sea, but with my ship I sunk headlong into its depths in a sudden fierce squall. It is not then the same wind that blows on the threshing-floor and fills the sails.

§ 7.533  DIONYSIUS OF ANDROS
It is no great marvel that I slipped when soaked by Zeus and Bacchus. It was two to one, and gods against a mortal.

§ 7.534  AUTOMEDON OF AETOLIA
Man, spare thy life, and go not to sea in ill season. Even as it is, man’s life is not long. Unhappy Cleonicus, thou wast hastening to reach bright Thasos, trading from Coele Syria — trading, O Cleonicus; but on thy voyage at the very setting of the Pleiads, with the Pleiads thou didst set.

§ 7.635  MELEAGER
No longer do I, goat-footed Pan, desire to dwell among the goats or on the hill-tops. What pleasure, what delight have I in mountains? Daphnis is dead, Daphnis who begot a fire in my heart. Here in the city will I dwell; let some one else set forth to hunt the wild beasts; Pan no longer loves his old life.

§ 7.536  ALCAEUS
Not even now the old man is dead, do clusters of the cultivated vine grow on his tomb, but brambles and the astringent wild pear that contracts the traveller's lips and his throat parched with thirst. But he who passes by the tomb of Hipponax should pray his corpse to rest in sleep.

§ 7.537  PHANIAS
No monument for his father, but in mournful memory of his lamented son did Lysis build this empty mound of earth, burying but his name, since the remains of unhappy Mantitheus never came into his parents' hands.

§ 7.538  ANYTE
This man when alive was Manes, but now he is dead he is as great as great Darius.

§ 7.539  PERSES
Heedless, Theotimus, of the coming evil setting of rainy Arcturus didst thou set out on thy perilous voyage, which carried thee and thy companions, racing over the Aegean in the many-oared galley, to Hades. Alas for Aristodice and Eupolis, thy parents, who mourn thee, embracing thy empty tomb.

§ 7.540  DAMAGETES
By Zeus, the Protector of strangers, we adjure thee, Sir, tell our father Charinus, in Aeolian Thebe, that Menis and Polynicus are no more; and say this, that though we perished at the hands of the Thracians, we do not lament our treacherous murder, but his old age left in bereavement ill to bear.

§ 7.541  DAMAGETES
Standing in the forefront of the battle, Chaeronidas, so spokest thou, "Zeus, grant me death or victory," on that night when by Achaean Taphros, the foe made thee meet him in stubborn battle strife: verily doth Elis sing of thee above all men for thy valour, who didst then shed thy warm blood on the foreign earth.

§ 7.542  FLACCUS
The tender boy, slipping, broke the ice of the Hebrus frozen by the winter cold, and as he was carried away by the current, a sharp fragment of the Bistonian river breaking away cut through his neck. Part of him was carried away by the flood, but his mother laid in the tomb all that was left to her above the ice, his head alone. And, wailing, she cried, "My child, my child, part of thee hath the pyre buried and part the cruel water."

§ 7.543  ANONYMOUS
One should pray to be spared sea-voyages altogether, Theogenes, since thou, too, didst make thy grave in the Libyan Sea, when that tired close-packed flock of countless cranes descended like a cloud on thy loaded ship.

§ 7.544  ANONYMOUS
Tell, stranger, if ever thou dost come to Phthia, the land of vines, and to the ancient city of Thaumacia that, mounting once through the lonely woodland of Malea, thou didst see this tomb of Derxias the son of Lampo, whom once, as he hastened on his way to glorious Sparta, the bandits slew by treachery and not in open fight.

§ 7.545  HEGESIPPUS
They say that Hermes leads the just from the pyre to Rhadamanthus by the right-hand path, the path by which Aristonous, the not unwept son of Chaerestratus, descended to the house of Hades, the gatherer of peoples.

§ 7.546  ANONYMOUS
Aristo had his sling, a weapon procuring him a scanty living, with which he was wont to shoot the winged geese, stealing softly upon them so as to elude them as they fed with sidelong-glancing eyes. Now he is in Hades and the sling noiseless and idle with no hand to whirl it, and the game fly over his tomb.

§ 7.547  LEONIDAS OF ALEXANDRIA (ISOPSEPHA)
Bianor engraved the stone, not for his mother or father, as had been their meet fate, but for his unmarried daughter, and he groaned as he led the bride of twelve years not to Hymenaeus but to Hades.

§ 7.548  LEONIDAS OF ALEXANDRIA
"Who is the Argive Daemon on the tomb? Is he a brother of Dicaeoteles?" {Echo) "A brother of Dicaeoteles." "Did Echo speak the last words, or is it true that this is the man?" {Echo) "This is the man."

§ 7.549  LEONIDAS OF ALEXANDRIA
Niobe, a rock in Sipylus, still sobs and wails, mourning for the death of twice seven children, and never during the ages shall she cease from her plaint. Why did she speak the boastful words that robbed her of her life and her children

§ 7.550  LEONIDAS OF ALEXANDRIA
Antheus, who escaped the threats of sea-green Trito, escaped not the terrible Phthian wolf. For by the stream of Peneus he perished. Unfortunate! to whom the Nymphs were more treacherous than the Nereids.

§ 7.551  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS
Letoeus and Paulus, being two brothers, were united in life, and united in the predestined hour of their death, they lie by the Bosporus clothed in one shroud of dust. For they could not live apart from each other, but ran together to Persephone. Hail, sweet pair, ever of one mind; on your tomb should stand an altar of Concord.

§ 7.552  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS
A. "STRANGER, why mournest thou?" B. "For thy fate." A. "Dost know who I am?" B. "No, but still I see thy end was wretched, and who art thou?" A. "Periclea." B. "Whose wife?" A. "The wife of a noble man, an orator from Asia, by name Memnonius." B. "And how is it that thou liest by the Bosporus?" A. "Ask Fate who gave me a tomb in a strange land far from my own country." B. "Didst thou leave a son?"
A. "One of three years old, who wanders up and down the house seeking the milk of my breasts."
B. "May he live and prosper." A. "Yea, yea, my friend, pray for him, that he may grow up and shed sweet tears for me."

§ 7.553  DAMASCIUS THE PHILOSOPHER
Zosime who was never a slave but in body, has now gained freedom for her body too.

§ 7.554  PHILIPPUS OF THESSALONICA
The mason Architeles with mourning hands constructed a tomb for Agathanor his son. Alas! alas! this stone no chisel cut, but drenched by many tears it crumbled. Thou, tablet, rest lightly on the dead, that he may say "Of a truth it was my father’s hand which placed this stone on me."

§ 7.555  JOANNES THE POET
Looking at my husband, as my life was ebbing away, I praised the infernal gods, and those of wedlock, the former because I left my husband alive, the latter that he was so good a husband. But may their father live to bring up our children.

§ 7.555  By the same
This, Nosto, was the reward thy virtue gained, that thy husband shed tears for thee at thy death.

§ 7.556  THEODORUS PROCONSUL On a mime
Hades is grim, but he laughed at thy death, Tityrus, and made thee the mime of the dead.

§ 7.557  CYRUS THE POET
Maia had passed her thirtieth year and was approaching her thirty-third, when Hades cast at her his cruel dart and carried off the woman who was like a rosebud, a very counterpart of Penelope in her work.

§ 7.558  ANONYMOUS
Hades spoiled the ripe fruit of my youth and the stone hid me in this ancestral tomb. My name was Rufinus, the son of Aetherius and I was born of a noble mother, but in vain was I born; for after reaching the perfection of education and youth, I carried, alas! my learning to Hades and my youth to Erebus. Lament long, O traveller, when thou readest these lines, for without doubt thou art either the father or the son of living men.

§ 7.559  THEOSEBEIA
Three sorrows Medicine met with. First she shore her hair for Hippocrates, and next for Galen, and now she lies on the tearful tomb of Ablabius, ashamed, now he is gone, to shew herself among men.

§ 7.560  PAULUS SILENTIARIUS
Though the earth cover thee in a strange land, Leontius, though thou didst die far from thy afflicted parents, yet many funeral tears were shed for thee by mortals consumed by insufferable sorrow. For thou wert greatly beloved by all and it was just as if thou wert the common child, the common companion of every one. Ah! direful and merciless was Fate that spared not even thy youth.

§ 7.561  JULIANUS, PREFECT OF EGYPT
Nature after long labour gave birth to a man whose virtue was worthy of former years, Craterus (strong) in name and in wisdom, whose death moved to tears even his grievous opponents. If he died young, blame the supreme decree of Fate who willed that the world should be despoiled of its ornament.

§ 7.562  By the same
O ELOQUENCE of Craterus, what profits it thee if thou wast a cause of speech or of silence to thy adversaries? When thou didst live, all cried out in applause; but after thy death the mouths of all are sealed; for none any more would lend an ear to speeches. The art of speaking perished with Craterus.

§ 7.563  PAULUS SILENTIARIUS
Thou art bound in brazen silence, Chryseomallus, and no longer dost thou figure to us the men of old time in dumb show. Now, most gifted man, is thy silence, in which we once took delight, grievous to us

§ 7.564  ANONYMOUS
Here on a time the earth opened to receive Laodice, not duly laid to rest, but flying from the violence of the enemy. Unreckonable Time having effaced the monument, Maximus the Proconsul of Asia brought it again to light, and having noticed the girl’s bronze statue lying elsewhere unhonoured, he set it up on this circular barrow.

§ 7.665  JULIANUS, PREFECT OF EGYPT
The painter limned Theodote just as she was Would his art had failed him and he had given forgetfulness to us who mourn her.

§ 7.566  MACEDONIUS CONSUL
Earth and Ilithyia, one of you brought me to birth, the other covers me. Farewell! I have run the race of each. I depart, not knowing whither I go, for neither do I know who I was or whose or from whence when I came to you.

§ 7.567  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS
This is the monument of Candaules, and Justice seeing my fate said that my wife committed no crime; for she wished not to be seen by two men, but wished either her first husband or him who knew her charms to possess her. It was fated for Candaules to come to an evil end; otherwise he would never have ventured to show his own wife to strange eyes.

§ 7.568  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS
Fate carried me off but fourteen years old, the only child that Thalia bore to Didymus. Ah, ye Destinies, why were ye so hard-hearted, never bringing me to the bridal chamber or the sweet task of conceiving children? My parents were on the point of leading me to Hymen, but I went to loathed Acheron. But, ye gods, still, 1 pray, the plaints of my father and mother who wither away because of my death.

§ 7.669  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS
Yea, I pray thee, traveller, tell my dear husband, when thou seest my country Thessaly, "Thy wife is dead and rests in her tomb, alas, near the shore of the Bosporus. But build me at home a cenotaph near thee, so that thou mayest be reminded of her who was once thy spouse."

§ 7.570  ANONYMOUS
Our princes, owing to his virtues, promoted Dulcitius to great wealth and proconsular rank; and now that Nature has released him from earth, the immortal gods possess himself, but this enclosure his body.

§ 7.571  LEONTIUS SCHOLASTICUS
When Orpheus departed, perchance some Muse survived, but at thy death, Plato, the lyre ceased to sound. For in thy mind and in thy fingers there yet survived some little fragment at least of ancient music.

§ 7.572  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS
A certain man secretly took his pleasure in unholy intercourse, stealing the embraces of another man's wife; but of a sudden the roof fell in and buried the sinners still coupled. One trap holds both, and together they lie in an embrace that never ceases.

§ 7.573  LEONTIUS SCHOLASTICUS
This is the tomb of Cheiredius whom the Attic land nourished, an orator the image of the ancient ten, ever easily convincing the judge, but when himself a judge never swerving a hair’s breadth from the straight path.

§ 7.574  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS
Agathonicus had diligently studied jurisprudence, but Fate has not learnt to fear the laws, and laying hands on him tore him from his learning in it, before he was of lawful age to practise. His fellow-students bitterly lamented over his tomb, mourning for the ornament of their company, and his mother tearing her hair in her mourning beat herself, remembering, alas, the labour of her womb. Yet blest was he in fading young and escaping early the iniquity of life.

§ 7.575  LEONTIUS SCHOLASTICUS
The tomb is Rhode’s. She was a Tyrian woman, and quitting her country came to this city for the sake of her children. She adorned the bed of Gemellus of eternal memory, who formerly was a professor of law in this city. She died in old age, but should have lived for thousands of years: we never feel we have enough of the good.

§ 7.576  JULIANUS, PREFECT OF EGYPT
A. "ARE you dead, Pyrrho?" B. "I doubt it." A. "Even after your final dissolution, do you say you doubt?" B. "I doubt." A, "The tomb has put an end to doubt"

§ 7.577  By the same
May he who buried me at the cross-roads come to an ill end and get no burial at all; since all the travellers tread on Timon and in death, the portion of all, I alone have no portion of repose.

§ 7.578  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS
In this tomb rests strong Panopeus the lion-hunter, the piercer of shaggy-breasted panthers; for a terrible scorpion issuing from a hole in the earth smote his heel as he walked on the hills and slew him. On the ground, alas, lie his poor javelin and spear, to be the playthings of impudent deer.

§ 7.579   LEONTIAS SCHOLASTICUS
Thou seest the ever-smiling face of Peter the orator, excellent in debate, excellent in friendship. In the theatre whilst looking at the performance he fell from the roof with others and was the only one who died, after surviving a short time, sufficient for his needs. I call this no violent death, but a natural one.

§ 7.580  JULIANUS, PREFECT OF EGYPT
Never shalt thou hide me even in the very bottom of the earth in a manner that shall hide the all-seeing eye of Justice.

§ 7.581  By the same
Thou givest me a tomb in return for murdering me, but may heaven grant thee in return the same kindness.

§ 7.582  By the same
Hail! thou ship-wrecked man, and when thou landest in Hades, blame not the waves of the sea, but the winds. It was they who overcame thee, but the kindly water of the sea cast thee out on the land by the tombs of thy fathers.

§ 7.583  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS
O WOULD that marriage and bridal beds had never been, for then there would have been no occasion for child-bed. But now the poor woman sat in labour and in the unhappy recess of her womb lay the dead child. Three days passed and ever the babe remained with unfulfilled hope of its being born. The womb, O babe, instead of the dust rests lightly on thee, for it enwraps thee and thou hast no need of earth.

§ 7.584  JULIANUS, PREFECT OF EGYPT
Dost thou travel on the sea, thou who didst take up my ship-wrecked body and bury it in a tomb? Travel, but avoid Cape Malea, and mayst thou ever, my friend, find fair weather. But if Fortune be adverse, mayst thou meet with the same kindness.

§ 7.585  By the same
Myodon, the span of his life finished, went to Hades in his own boat, not requiring the ferry-boat of the dead. For she who was in life his support and the witness of his toil, often loaded with his prey from the sea, was his fellow-traveller in death too, when he came to his end in company with the burning boat; so faithful to her master was she, increasing his substance and travelling with him to life and to death.

§ 7.586  By the same
It was not the sea which was thy end, and the gales, but insatiable love of that commerce which turned thee mad. Give me a little living from the land; let others pursue profit from the sea gained by fighting the storms.

§ 7.587  By the same
On Pamphilus the Philosopher
The earth bore thee, the sea destroyed thee, and Pluto's seat received thee, and thence thou didst ascend to heaven. Thou didst not perish in the deep, Pamphilus, as one shipwrecked, but in order to add an ornament to the domains of all the immortals.

§ 7.588  PAULUS SILENTIARIUS
Damocharis passed into the final silence of Fate; alas! the Muses’ lovely lyre is silent; the holy foundation of Grammar has perished. Sea-girt Cos, thou art again in mourning as for Hippocrates.

§ 7.589  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS
Bear not the message, traveller, to Antioch, lest again the streamlets of Castalia lament, because of a sudden at the age of seventeen Eustorgius left the Muse and his unfulfilled hope of learning in Roman Law, and to empty dust was changed the bloom of his youth. He lies in the tomb and instead of him we see his name and the colours of the brush.

§ 7.590  JULIANUS, PREFECT OF EGYPT
A. "FAMOUS was Ioannes." B. "Mortal, say." A. "The son-in-law of an empress." B. "Yes, but mortal." A. "The flower of the family of Anastasius." B. "And mortal too was he." A. "Righteous in his life. B. "That is no longer mortal. Virtue is stronger than death."

§ 7.591  By the same
I am the tomb of Hypatius and I do not say that I contain in this little space the remains of the great Roman general. For the earth, ashamed of burying so great a man in so small a tomb, preferred to give him to the sea to keep.

§ 7.592  By the same
The emperor himself was wrath with the roaring sea for covering the body of Hypatius; for now he was dead he wished the last honours to be paid to him, and the sea hid him from the favour of his magnanimity. Hence, a great proof of the mildness of his heart, he honoured the distinguished dead with this cenotaph.

§ 7.593  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS On Eugenia his Sister
The earth covers Eugenia who once bloomed in beauty and poesy, who was learned in the revered science of the law. On her tomb the Muse, Themis, and Aphrodite all shore their hair.

§ 7.594  JULIANUS, PREFECT OF EGYPT
Thy truest monument, Theodorus, is not on thy tomb, but in the many thousand pages of thy books, in which, snatching them from oblivion, thou didst recall to life the labours of thoughtful poets.

§ 7.595  By the same
Theodorus died, and now the crowd of ancient poets is really dead and gone; for all breathed as long AS he breathed, and the light of all is quenched with his; all are hidden in one tomb.

§ 7.596  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS On Theodotus his brother-in-law
Nay! by this our last journey in the earth, neither did my wife hate me nor did I, Theodotus, willingly become Eugenia's enemy; but some envy or fatality led us into that great error. Now, having come to the pure bench of Minos, we were both pronounced not guilty.

§ 7.597  JULIANUS, PREFECT OF EGYPT
Silent she lies, whose voice was sweet and brave, from whose bosom alone of women burst the fulness of song; so strong were the threads of Fate that they closed the tuneful lips of Calliope.

§ 7.598  By the same
Neither the weakness of thy sex, Calliope, nor that of old age, relaxed the strength of thy voice, but yielding with a hard struggle to the common law of death thou didst relax it, alas, alas!

§ 7.599  By the same
She is dead, Kale (Beautiful) by name and more so in mind than in face. Alas! the spring of the Graces has perished utterly. For very like was she to Aphrodite, but only for her lord; for others she was an unassailable Pallas. What stone did not mourn when the strong hand of Hades tore her from her husband’s arms.

§ 7.600  By the same
Anastasia, flower of the blooming Graces, the marriage bed received thee in due season and the tomb before thy season. Both thy father and husband shed bitter tears for thee, and perchance even the ferry-man of the dead weeps for thee. For not even a whole year didst thou pass with thy husband, but the tomb holds thee aged alas! but sixteen.

§ 7.601  By the same
Alas! Alas! the winter of savage Hell nips the spring of thy countless charms; the tomb has torn thee from the light of the sun at the sad age of sixteen years, and has blinded with evil grief thy husband and thy father, for whom, Anastasia, thou didst shine brighter than the sun.

§ 7.602  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS
Eustathius, sweet is thy image, but I see thee in wax, and no longer doth that pleasant speech dwell in thy mouth. Alas, thy blooming youth is now futile dust of earth. For after reaching thy fifteenth year thou didst look only on twenty-four suns. Neither thy grandfathers high office helped thee, nor the riches of thy father. All who look on thy image blame unjust Fate, ah! so merciless, for quenching the light of such beauty.

§ 7.603  JULIANUS, PREFECT OF EGYPT
A. "CHARON is savage." B. "Kind, rather." A. "He carried off the young man so soon." B. "But in mind he was the equal of greybeards." A. "He cut him off from pleasure." B. "But he thrust him out of the way of trouble." A. "He knew not wedlock." B. "Nor the pains of wedlock."

§ 7.604  PAULUS SILENTIARIUS
Maiden, thy parents with sorrowing hands made thy funeral, not thy wedding bed. The errors of life and the labour of childbed thou hast escaped, but a bitter cloud of mourning sits on them. For Fate hath hidden thee, Macedonia, aged but twelve, young in beauty, old in behaviour.

§ 7.606   JULIANUS, PREFECT OF EGYPT
Your sweet husband, Rhodo, builds a sarcophagus of fine marble and a tomb for you and gives alms to the poor to redeem your soul, in return for your kindness in dying early and giving him freedom.

§ 7.606  PAULUS SILENTIARIUS
Gentle, clothed in freedom, sweet of aspect, leaving alive a son who tended his old age, Theodorus rests here in hope of better things than death, happy in his labour and happy in his death.

§ 7.607  PALLADAS OF ALEXANDRIA
Old Psyllo, grudging her heirs, made herself her own heir and with a quick leap went down to the house of Hades, contriving to end her life and her outlay at the same time. Having eaten up all her fortune, she perished together with her spending power, and jumped to Hades when her last penny was gone.

§ 7.608  EUTOLMIUS SCHOLASTICUS, ILLUSTRIS
Menippe, mourning the early death of her son, sent forth her spirit together with her loud dirge, nor could she recover it to utter another wail, but at the same moment ceased from lament and from life.

§ 7.609  PAULUS SILENTIARIUS
Atticus with a bold heart dug me this tomb in his life-time, in anticipation of the common fate that overtakes all men, mocking the fear of death owing to his virtue. But long may the sun of wisdom remain beneath the sun.

§ 7.610  PALLADAS OF ALEXANDRIA
One carried off a bride and Fate carried off the wedding party, despoiling of life the merry company. One wedding sent four and twenty corpses to their graves, and one chamber became their common mortuary. Penthesilea, unhappy bride, Pentheus bridegroom of sorrow, rich in deaths was your marriage!

§ 7.611  EUTOLMIUS SCHOLASTICUS, ILLUSTRIS
In double grief her wretched mother bewailed maiden Helen dead just after her brother. Her suitors too lamented her equally, for each could mourn for her as his own who was yet no one’s.

§ 7.612  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS
Alas! alas! this earth covers the tenth Muse, the lyric chanter of Rome and Alexandria. They have perished, the notes of the lyre; song hath perished as if dying together with Joanna. Perchance the nine Muses have imposed on themselves a law worthy of thee — to dwell in Joanna's tomb instead of on Helicon.

§ 7.613  DIOGENES, BISHOP OF AMISUS On his nephew Diogenes
This monument of thy radiant youth, Diogenes, did thy Phrygian father erect to thee on the Euxine Sea alas! how far from thy home. The decree of God brought thee here to die, a sorrow fore-doomed for me, thy father's brother, who having laid thee out with my consecrated hand and with prayer, put thee to rest here beside the dancing-place of the blest

§ 7.614  AGATHIAS SCHOLASTICUS
Thrice blessed Hellanis and lovely Lamaxis were the stars of their Lesbian home; and when Paches, sailing here with the Athenian ships, ravaged the territory of Mytilene, he conceived a guilty passion for the young matrons and killed their husbands, thinking thus to force them. They, taking ship across the wide Aegean main, hurried to steep Mopsopia and complained to the people of the actions of wicked Paches, until they drove him to an evil doom. This, ladies, ye accomplished, and returning to your country lie in it dead. And a good guerdon ye have for your pains, since ye sleep hard by your husbands, a monument of glorious virtue, and all still sing the praises of the heroines, one in heart, who avenged the sufferings of their country and of their lords.

§ 7.615  ANONYMOUS
The earth of Phaleron holds Musaeus, Eumolpus’ dear son, dead under this tomb.

§ 7.616  ANONYMOUS
Here the earth received at his death Linus of Thebes, son of the fair-wreathed Muse Urania.

§ 7.617  ANONYMOUS
Here the Muses buried Thracian Orpheus of the golden lyre, whom Zeus, who reigneth on high, slew with his smoking bolt.

§ 7.618  ANONYMOUS
This, his country Lindos, that glories in the sea, mourns wise Cleobulus dead.

§ 7.619  ANONYMOUS
This, his country Corinth, that lies near the sea, holds in her bosom Periander, supreme in wealth and wisdom.

§ 7.620  DIOGENES LAERTIUS
Never be vexed at not getting anything, but rejoice in all the gifts of God. For wise Periander died of disappointment at not attaining the thing he wished.

§ 7.621  ANONYMOUS
Here I, unhappy Sophocles, entered the house of Hades, laughing, because I ate Sardinian celery. So perished I, and others otherwise, but all in some way or other.

§ 7.622  ANTIPHILUS OF BYZANTIUM
When Borchus the neat-herd went to get the sweet honey-comb, climbing the steep rock by a rope, one of his dogs who used to follow the herd followed him, and, as he was pulling himself up, bit through the thin rope which was trickling with honey. He fell into Hades, grasping, at the cost of his life, that honey which no other man could harvest.

§ 7.623  AEMILIANUS
Suck, poor child, at the breast whereat thy mother will never more suckle thee; drain the last drops from the dead. She hath already rendered up her spirit, pierced by the sword, but a mother's love can cherish her child even in death.

§ 7.624  DIODORUS
Out on thee, dreaded Ionian Sea, pitiless water, ferrier of men to blackest Hades, thou who hast engulfed so many. Who, with the fate of the unfortunates before his eyes, shall tell all thy crimes, ill-starred sea? Thou hast swallowed in thy surges Aegeus and Labeo, with their short-lived companions and their whole ship.

§ 7.625  ANTIPATER OF SIDON
Know that Diodorus, the son of Calligenes of Olynthus, who could make his way even as far as Atlas, and knew the Cretan waters and the navigation of the Black Sea, died in port, falling off the prow at night, while he was spewing out the excess of the feast. Ah, how small a bit of water was fatal to him who had been proved in so vast an expanse of ocean!

§ 7.626  ANONYMOUS (Not Sepulchral)
Ye furthest Nasamonian wilds of Libya, no longer, your expanse vexed by the hordes of wild beasts of the continent, shall ye ring in echo, even beyond the sands of the Nomads, to the voice of lions roaring in the desert, since Caesar the son has trapped the countless tribe and brought it face to face with his fighters. Now the heights once full of the lairs of prowling beasts are pasturage for the cattle of men.

§ 7.627  DIODORUS
Leaving thy bridal-chamber half prepared, thy wedding close at hand, thou hast gone, young man, down the baneful road of Hades; and sorely hast thou afflicted Thynion of Astacus, who most piteously of all lamented for thee, dead in thy prime, weeping for the evil fate of her Hipparchus, seeing thou didst complete but twenty-four years.

§ 7.628  CRINAGORAS
Other islands ere this have rejected their inglorious names and named themselves after men. Be called Erotides (Love islands), ye Oxeiai (Sharp islands); it is no shame for you to change; for Eros himself gave both his name and his beauty to the boy whom Dies laid here beneath a heap of clods. O earth, crowded with tombs, and sea that washest on the shore, do thou lie light on the boy, and thou lie hushed for his sake.

§ 7.629  ANTIPATER OF THESSALONICA
Dost thou who art so great rest in so shallow a soil? He who looks at thee, Socrates, must blame the unwisdom of the Greeks. Merciless judges! who slew the best of men, nor shamed them one jot. Such often are the Athenians.

§ 7.630  ANTIPHILUS OF BYZANTIUM Now nearing my country I said, "Tomorrow shall this wind that blew so long against me abate." Scarce had I closed my lips when the sea became like hell, and that light word I spoke was my destruction. Beware ever of that word "tomorrow"; not even little things are unnoticed by the Nemesis that is the foe of our tongues.

§ 7.631  APOLLONIDES
If thou comest to Apollo’s harbour at Miletus, give to Diogenes the mournful message that his shipwrecked son Diphilus lies in Andrian earth, having drunk the water of the Aegean Sea.

§ 7.632  DIODORUS
A little child in Diodorus’ house fell from a little ladder, but falling head first broke the vertebra of its neck, to break which is fatal. But when it saw its revered master running up, it at once stretched out its baby arms to him. Earth, never lie heavy on the bones of the little slave child, but be kind to two-year-old Corax.

§ 7.633  CRINAGORAS
The moon herself, rising at early eve, dimmed her light, veiling her mourning in night, because she saw her namesake, pretty Selene, going down dead to murky Hades. On her she had bestowed the beauty of her light, and with her death she mingled her own darkness.

§ 7.634  ANTIPHILUS
Old Philo, stooping to lift the bier to gain his daily wage, stumbled slightly, but fell and was killed; for he was ripe for Hades, and old age was on the look out for an opportunity; and so all unawares he lifted for himself that bier on which he used to carry the corpses of others.

§ 7.635  ANTIPHILUS
Hierocles’ boat grew old with him, always travelled with him, and accompanied Him in life and in death. It was his faithful fishing partner, and no juster boat ever sailed the waves. It laboured to keep him until his old age, and then it buried him when he was dead, and travelled with him to Hades.

§ 7.636  CRINAGORAS
O HAPPY shepherd, would that I, too, had led my sheep down this grassy white knoll, answering the bleatings of the rams that lead the flock, rather than dipped in the bitter brine the rudder to guide my ship. Therefore I sunk to the depths, and the whistling east wind brought me to rest on this beach.

§ 7.637  ANTIPATER OF THESSALONICA
Pyrrhus the solitary oarsman, fishing with his hair-line for small hakes and sprats from his little boat, fell, struck by a thunderbolt, far away from the shore. The boat came ashore of itself, bearing the message by sulphur and smoke, and had no need of a speaking keel like that of Argo.

§ 7.638  CRINAGORAS
The poor mother, when the expected fate of her two sons was reversed, spoke thus, clasping both of them: "Neither did I hope, my child, to weep for thee to-day, nor, my child, to see thee yet among the living. Now your fates have been interchanged, but sorrow undeniable has come to me."

§ 7.639  ANTIPATER OF THESSALONICA
Every sea is sea. Why do we foolishly blame the Cyclades, or the Hellespont, and the Sharp (Oxeiai) Isles? They merit not their evil fame; for why, when I had escaped them, did the harbour of Scarphaea drown me? Let who will pray for fair weather to bring him home; Aristagoras, who is buried here, knows that the sea is the sea.

§ 7.640  ANTIPATER OF THESSALONICA
Fearsome for sailors is the setting of the Kids, but for Pyro calm was far more adverse than storm. For his ship, stayed by calm, was overtaken by a swift double-oared pirate galley. He was slain by them, having escaped the storm but to perish in the calm. Alas, in what an evil harbour ended his voyage!

§ 7.641  ANTIPHILUS (Not Sepulchral, but on a water-clock)
This recorder of the invisible sun, divided into twelve parts, and as often speaking with tongueless mouth, each time that, the water being compressed in the narrow pipe, the air sends forth a sonorous blast, was erected by Athenaeus for the public, so that the sun might be visible even when covered by envious clouds.

§ 7.642  APOLLONIDES
Between Syrus and Delos the waves engulfed Menoetes of Samos, son of Diaphanes, together with his cargo. For a pious purpose was he hurrying home, but the sea is the enemy even of those who are hastening to be with their fathers in sickness.

§ 7.643  CRINAGORAS
O HADES the inexorable, thou hast carried off Hymnis, Evander’s daughter, ever the loveable pet of his house, the coaxing nine-year-old girl. Why didst thou send such early death to her who must one day in any case be thine?

§ 7.644  BIANOR THE GRAMMARIAN
Cleariste mourned her last for the early death of her son, and on the tomb ended her embittered life. For, wailing with all the force a mother's sorrow could give her, she could not recover force to draw her breath. Women, why give ye such ample measure to your grief as to wail even till it brings you to Hades?

§ 7.645  CRINAGORAS
O PHILOSTRATUS, unhappy for all thy wealth, where are those sceptres and constant intercourse with princes on which thy fortune ever depended? Shall thy tomb be (?) by the Nile conspicuous in the region of ....? Foreigners have shared among them the fruit of thy toil, and thy corpse shall lie in sandy Ostracine.

§ 7.646  ANYTE
These were the last words that Erato spoke, throwing her arms round her dear father’s neck, her cheeks wet with fresh tears: "Father, I am thine no longer; I am gone, and sombre death casts already his black veil over my eyes."

§ 7.647  SIMONIDES OR SIMIAS
These were the very last words that Gorgo spoke to her dear mother, in tears throwing her hands round her neck: "Stay here with father and mayest thou bear another daughter, more fortunate than I was, to tend thy grey old age."

§ 7.648  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
Good Aristocrates, as he was taking ship for Acheron, resting his doomed head on his hand, said: "Let every man seek to have children and get him a wife, even if miserable poverty pinch him. Let him support his life with pillars; a house without pillars is ill to look on. Nay! what is best, may the room where his hearth is have many fair columns, and shining with the luxury of many lights, illumine the log that burns on the hearth." Aristocrates knew what was best, but, O man, he hated the evilmindedness of women.

§ 7.649  ANYTE
Thy mother, Thersis, instead of a bridal chamber and solemn wedding rites, gave thee to stand on this thy marble tomb a maiden like to thee in stature and beauty, and even now thou art dead we may speak to thee.

§ 7.650  PHALAECUS
Avoid busying thee with the sea, and put thy mind to the plough that the oxen draw, if it is any joy for thee to see the end of a long life. For on land there is length of days, but on the sea it is not easy to find a man with grey hair.

§ 7.651  EUPHORION
Craggy Elaeus doth not cover those thy bones, nor this stone that speaks in blue letters. They are broken by the Icarian sea on the shingly beach of Doliche and lofty Dracanon, and I, this empty mound of earth, am heaped up here in the thirsty herbage of the Dryopess for the sake of old friendship with Polymedes.

§ 7.652  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
Thou booming sea, why didst thou rise in angry storm, and striking with a huge wave send headlong to the deep, cargo and all, Teleutagoras, son of Timares, as he sailed in his little ship? He, lying somewhere dead on the broad beach, is bewailed over by terns and fish-eating gulls, and Timares, looking on his son’s empty tear-bedewed tomb, weeps for his child Teleutagoras.

§ 7.653  PANCRATES
At the setting of the Hyades the fierce Sirocco rose and destroyed Epierides in the Aegean Sea, himself, his ship and crew; and for him his father in tears made this empty tomb.

§ 7.654  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
The Cretans are ever brigands and pirates, and never just; who ever heard of the justice of a Cretan? So they were Cretans who threw me unhappy Timolytus into the sea, when I was travelling with no very rich cargo. I am bewailed by the seagulls, and there is no Timolytus in this tomb.

§ 7.655  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
A little dust of the earth is enough for me, and may a rich and useless monument, a weight ill for the dead to bear, crush some other man in his rest. What is that to Alexander, son of Calliteles, if they know who I am or not, now that I am dead?

§ 7.656  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
Salute, Sir, this little mound and modest monument of hapless Alcimenes, though it be oil overgrown by the sharp buckthorn and brambles on which I, Alcimenes, once waged war.

§ 7.657  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
Ye shepherds who roam over this mountain ridge feeding your goats and fleecy sheep, do, in the name of Earth, a little kindness, but a pleasant one, to Cleitagoras, for the sake of Persephone underground. May the sheep bleat to me, and the 'shepherd seated on the unhewn rock pipe soft notes to them as they feed, and may the villager in early spring gather meadow flowers and lay a garland on my grave. May one of you bedew it with the milk of a ewe, mother of pretty lambs, holding her udder up and wetting the edge of the tomb. There are ways, 1 assure you, even among the dead of returning a favour done to the departed.

§ 7.658  THEOCRITUS OR LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
I shall discover, wayfarer, if thou honourest more the good, or if a worthless man hath as much of thy esteem. In the first case thou wilt say, "All hail to this tomb because it lies light on the holy head of Eurymedon."

§ 7.659  THEOCRITUS (on the same Tomb)
Thou hast left an infant son, but thyself, Eurymedon, didst die in thy prime and liest in this tomb. Thy abode is with the divine among men, but him the citizens will honour, mindful of his father’s goodness.

§ 7.660  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
Stranger, a Syracusan named Orthon enjoins this upon thee: "Never go out drunk on a winter night." For that was what caused my death, and instead of resting in my ample country I lie clothed in foreign soil.

§ 7.661  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
The tomb is that of Eusthenes the sophist, who was a reader of character, skilled in discovering our thought from our eyes. Well did his companions bury him, a stranger in a strange land, and among them was a poet marvellously dear to him. So the sophist, although he was feeble, had those who took care that he should have on his death all proper honour.

§ 7.662  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
The girl is gone to Hades before her time in her seventh year, before all her many playmates, hapless child, longing for her little brother, who twenty months old tasted of loveless death. Alas Peristera for thy sad fate! How hath Heaven decreed that the very path of men should be sown with calamities!

§ 7.663  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
Little Medeus made this tomb by the wayside for his Thracian nurse, and inscribed it with the name of Clita. She will have her reward for nursing the boy Why? She is still called "useful"

§ 7.664  ANONYMOUS
Stand and look on Archilochus, the iambic poet of old times, whose vast renown reached to the night and to the dawn. Verily did the Muses and Delian Apollo love him; so full of melody was he, so skilled to write verse and to sing it to the lyre.

§ 7.665  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
Trust not in the length or depth of the ship thou voyagest in; one wind lords it over every keel. One blast destroyed Promachus, and one huge wave dashed him into the trough of the sea. Yet Heaven was not entirely unkind to him, but he got funeral and a tomb in his own country by the hands of his own people, since the rude sea cast out his body on the expanse of the beach.

§ 7.666  ANTIPATER OF THESSALONICA
This is the place where Leander crossed, these are the straits, unkind not only to one lover. This is where Hero once dwelt, here are the ruins of the tower, the treacherous lamp rested here. In this tomb they both repose, still reproaching that envious wind.

§ 7.667  ANONYMOUS In the Church of St. Anastasia in Thessalonica
Why, lamenting in vain, do you stay beside my tomb? I, among the dead, suffer naught worthy of tears. Cease from lament, my husband, and ye, my children, rejoice and preserve the memory of Amazonia.

§ 7.668  LEONIDAS OF ALEXANDRIA
Not even if smiling calm were to smooth the waves for me, and gently rippling Zephyr were to blow, shall ye see me take ship; for I dread the perils I encountered formerly battling with the winds.

§ 7.669  PLATO
Thou lookest on the stars, my Star. Would I were heaven, to look on thee with many eyes.

§ 7.670  PLATO
Of old among the living thou didst shine the Star of morn; now shinest thou in death the Star of eve.

§ 7.671  By some attributed to BIANOR
Ever insatiable Charon, why didst thou wantonly take young Attalus? Was he not thine even had he died old?

§ 7.672  ANONYMOUS
Inscribed at Corinth
The earth holds the comely body, heaven the glorious spirit of Andreas, who, administering justice in Greece and Illyria, kept his hands clean of ill-gotten gain.

§ 7.673  ANONYMOUS
If pious folk live after the end of this life, dwelling, as is fit, in the mouths of all men, thou, Andreas, livest and art not dead, but the divine place of the immortal holy ones has received thee after life's labour.

§ 7.674  ADRIANUS
This is the tomb of Archilochus, whom the Muse, out of kindness to Homer, guided to furious iambics.

§ 7.675  LEONIDAS OF ALEXANDRIA Isopsephon
Tremble not in loosing thy cable from the tomb of the shipwrecked man. While I was perishing another was travelling unhurt.

§ 7.676  ANONYMOUS
I, Epictetus, was a slave, and not sound in all my limbs, and poor as Irus, and beloved by the gods.

§ 7.677  SIMONIDES
This is the tomb of famous Megistias the prophet, whom the Persians slew after crossing the Spercheius. Though he well knew then the impending fate, he disdained to desert the Spartan leaders.

§ 7.678  ANONYMOUS
Haying accomplished my military service, I, Soterichus, lie here, leaving to my sweet children the wealth I gained by my labours. I commanded in the cavalry, like Gerenian Nestor, and I never amassed any treasure from unjust actions. Therefore after death too I see the light of Olympus.

§ 7.679  SAINT SOPHRONIUS THE PATRIARCH
A. "TELL me, tomb, of him whom thou hast hidden within thee, who and whence he was, whose son, his profession, and substance." B. "This man was Joannes of Cyprus, the son of noble Stephanus, and he was the pastor of Alexandria. He was wealthiest of all the Cyprians by inheritance and by his holy labours; and to tell all the divine deeds he did on earth is beyond my understanding or the tongue of others; for he surpassed in most brilliant virtues even men who seemed to surpass others. All the beautiful public works which this city possesses are ornaments due to his most praiseworthy munificence."

§ 7.680  SAINT SOPHRONIUS THE PATRIARCH
Joannes, both chief in virtue and chief priest of Alexandria, lies here after his death in his dear country. For his body was mortal, although he shall have immortal life and did countless immortal works on earth.

§ 7.681  PALLADAS
You did not go abroad for the sake of honour, but of death, and although lame you ran to Hades, Gessius, swifter than the Fates. For you retreated from life owing to the advancement of which you were dreaming.

§ 7.682  PALLADAS
Gessius did not die hurried by Fate, but arrived in Hades before Fate.

§ 7.683  PALLADAS
The wisest of the Seven Sages said "Naught in excess," but you, Gessius, were not convinced of it, and came to this end. Though erudite, you incurred the reproach of the greatest lack of reason in desiring to ascend to heaven. Thus it was that Pegasus was fatal to Bellerophon, because he wished to learn the rules of motion of the stars. But he had a horse and the confident strength of youth, whereas Gessius could not screw his courage up enough even to ease himself.

§ 7.684  PALLADAS
Let no mortal even seek to be a god also, nor pursue the pride of high office. Gessius is the proof of it, for he was first of all puffed up and then collapsed, not content with mortal felicity.

§ 7.685  PALLADAS
You sought and found the end of life and happiness, seeking an office tending to the highest end. But you obtained the honour, Gessius, receiving after your death the insignia of office.

§ 7.686  PALLADAS
When Baucalus saw Gessius just after his death, and lamer than ever, he spoke thus: "Gessius, what made thee descend into Hell, naked, without funeral, in new burial guise?" And to him in great wrath Gessius at once replied: "Baucalus, the pride of wealth may cause death."

§ 7.687  PALLADAS
When Gessius discovered the fraud of the oracle of Ammon not long before his death in a strange land, he blamed his own belief and that science, and those who trust in silly astrologers.

§ 7.688  . THE two soothsayers brought death on Gessius by their oaths, promising him the consular chair. O race of men vain minded, angry with themselves, knowing nothing even until the end of life.

§ 7.689  ANONYMOUS
Here Apellianus, most excellent of men, left his body, depositing his soul in the hands of Christ.

§ 7.690  ANONYMOUS
Not even in death hast thou lost on the earth all thy good fame, but the splendid gifts of thy mind all survive, all thy talent and learning, Pytheas, most highly endowed by nature. Therefore art thou gone to the islands of the blest.

§ 7.691  ANONYMOUS
I am a new Alcestis, and died for my good husband Zeno, whom alone I had taken to my bosom. My heart preferred him to the light of day and my sweet children. My name was Callicratia, and all men reverenced me.

§ 7.692  ANTIPATER OR PHILIP OF THESSALONICA
Glyco of Pergamus, the glory of Asia, the thunderbolt of the pancration, the broad-footed, the new Atlas, has perished; they have perished, those unvanquished hands, and Hades, who conquers all, has thrown him who never before met with a fall in Italy, Greece, or Asia.

§ 7.693  APOLLONIDES
I, the heap of stones by the shore, cover Glenis, who was swept away by the cruel swirl of a wave as he was angling from a steep projecting rock. All his fellow fishermen raised me. Save them, Poseidon, and grant ever to all casters of the line a calm shore.

§ 7.694  ADAEUS (Not Sepulchral)
If thou passest by the shrine of the hero (his name is Philopragmon) that is at the cross-roads outside Potidaea, tell him on what task thou journeyest, and he at once will help thee to find a means of accomplishing it.

§ 7.695  ANONYMOUS
Thou seest the face of virtuous Cassis. Though she be dead, the beauty of her soul rather than of her visage is made manifest by her virtues.

§ 7.696  ARCHIAS OF MITYLENE
Poor Satyr who didst dwell on the hills of Celaenae, thou hangest from a leafy pine, thy beastlike body flogged by the winds, because thou didst enter on fatal strife with Phoebus; and no longer, as of old, shall we Nymphs hear on the Phrygian hills the honeyed notes of thy flute.

§ 7.697  CHRISTODORUS
This tomb covers Joannes, who was the star of Epidamnus, the city founded by the famous sons of Heracles, whence it was brought about that this active hero ever reduced the stubborn strength of the unrighteous. The renowned fatherland of his pious parents and himself was Lychnidus, a city built by Phoenician Cadmus. Thence sprung this Heliconian lamp, because Cadmus first taught the Greeks letters. He attained the consulate, and administering justice in Illyria, crowned the Muses and pure Justice.

§ 7.698  CHRISTODORUS. HERE lies Joannes of Epidamnus, the far-shining ornament of ever brilliant consuls, who spread abroad the sweet light of the Muses, and more than others amplified the work of hospitality, having a hand that fed all, and alone among men knew not any measure to limit its gifts. He ornamented his lofty consular car with the laws of his country, making bright the works of pure justice. Ye gods! he did not live long, but at the age of only forty-two departed this life, regretted by all poets, whom he loved more than his own parents.

§ 7.699  ANONYMOUS
Icaria, memorial of the disastrous journey of Icarus flying through the newly-trodden air, would he too had never seen thee, would that Triton had never sent thee up above the expanse of the Aegean Sea. For thou hast no sheltered anchorage, either on the northern side nor where the sea breaks on thee from the south. A curse on thee, inhospitable foe of mariners. May I voyage as far from thee as from loathly Hell.

§ 7.700  DIODORUS GRAMMATICUS
Know, thou stone palace of the Night that hides me, and thou, flood of Cocytus, where wailing is loud, it was not my husband, as they say, who, contemplating another marriage, slew me. Why should Rufinus have that evil name for naught? But the fatal Destinies brought me here. Paula of Tarentum is not the only woman who has died before her time.

§ 7.701  DIODORUS GRAMMATICUS
His dear city set up this inscription by the beautiful waters of Ascania to the strong man Achaeus. Nicaea wept for him, and his father Diomedes erected to him this tall and glittering stone monument, lamenting; for it had been meeter for his son to pay him these honours when he died himself.

§ 7.702  APOLLONIDES
The capture of his rod, pulled out of the sea by the six-stranded hair line, was fatal to the fisherman Menestratus; then, when the red phycis, gaping at the errant bait of the murderous hook, swallowed greedily the sharp fraud, as he was cracking its skull with its teeth, it slew him, taking a violent leap and slipping down his throat.

§ 7.703  MYRINUS (Not Sepulchral)
Thyrsis the villager who feeds the Nymphs’ flocks, Thyrsis whose piping is equal to Pan’s, sleeps under the shady pine tree having drunk wine at midday, and Love takes his crook and keeps the flock himself. Ye Nymphs! ye Nymphs! awake the shepherd who fears no wolf, lest Love become the prey of wild beasts.

§ 7.704  ANONYMOUS
When I am dead may earth be mingled with fire. It matters not to me, for with me all is well.

§ 7.705  ANTIPATER OF THESSALONICA (Not Sepulchral)
Amphipolis, tomb of Edonian Phyllis, washed by the Strymon and great Hellespont, all that is left of thee is the ruin of the temple of Brauronian Artemis and the disputed water of thy river. We see her for whom the Athenians strove so long now lying like a torn rag of precious purple on either bank.

§ 7.706  DIOGENES LAERTIUS
Chrysippus became dizzy when he had drunk up the wine at a gulp, and sparing neither the Stoa, nor his country, nor his life, went to the house of Hades.

§ 7.707  DIOSCORIDES
I, too, red-bearded Scirtus the Satyr, guard the body of Sositheus as one of my brothers guards Sophocles on the Acropolis. For he wielded the ivy-bough, yea by the dance I swear it, in a manner worthy of the Satyrs of Phlius, and restoring ancient usage, led me, who had been reared in new-fangled fashions, back to the tradition of our fathers. Once more I forced the virile rhythm on the Doric Muse, and drawn to magniloquence ... a daring innovation introduced by Sositheus.

§ 7.708  DIOSCORIDES
Light earth, give birth to ivy that loves the stage to flourish on the tomb of Macho the writer of comedies. For thou holdest no re-dyed drone, but he whom thou clothest is a worthy remnant of ancient art. This shall the old man say: "O city of Cecrops, sometimes on the banks of the Nile, too, the strong-scented thyme of poesy grows."

§ 7.709  ALEXANDER
Ancient Sardis, home of my fathers, had I been reared in thee I would have been a cernus-bearer or eunuch, wearing ornaments of gold and beating pretty tambourines; but now my name is Alcman, and I am a citizen of Sparta of the many tripods, and have learnt to know the Heliconian Muses who made me greater than the tyrants Dascyles and Gyges.

§ 7.710  ERINNA
Ye columns and my Sirens, and thou, mournful pitcher that holdest the little ash of death, bid them who pass by my tomb hail, be they citizens or from another town; and tell this, too, that I was buried here a bride, and that my father called me Baucis, and that my country was Tenos, that they may know. Say, likewise, that my friend and companion Erinna engraved these lines on my tomb.

§ 7.711  ANTIPATER OF SIDON
Already her saffron couch inside the golden wedding-chamber had been laid for Clinareta the bride of Pitana. Already her parents Derao and Nicippus were looking forward to raising on high in both hands the blazing pine-torch, when sickness carried the girl away and took her to the sea of Lethe. All sadly her girl companions instead of beating at her door beat their breasts, as is the rite of death.

§ 7.712  ERINNA.
I am the tomb of Baucis the bride, and as thou passest the much bewept pillar, say to Hades who dwells below "Hades, thou art envious." To thee the fair letters thou seest on the stone will tell the most cruel fate of Bauco, how her bridegroom's father lighted her pyre with those very torches that had burnt while they sang the marriage hymn. And thou, Hymenaeus, didst change the tuneful song of wedding to the dismal voice of lamentation.

§ 7.713  ANTIPATER OF SIDON (Not Sepulchral)
Few are Erinna’s verses nor is she wordy in her songs, but this her little work is inspired. Therefore
fail she not to be remembered, and is not held hidden under the shadowy wing of black night. But we, stranger, the countless myriads of later singers, lie in heaps withering from oblivion. The low song of the swan is better than the cawing of jackdaws echoing far and wide through the clouds of spring.

§ 7.714  ANONYMOUS
I sing of Rhegium, that at the point of the shoaly coast of Italy tastes ever of the Sicilian sea, because under the leafy poplar she laid Ibycus the lover of the lyre, the lover of boys, who had tasted many pleasures; and over his tomb she shed in abundance ivy and white reeds.

§ 7.716  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
Far from the Italian land I lie, far from my country Tarentum, and this is bitterer to me than death. Such is the life of wanderers, ill to live; but the Muses loved me and instead of sourness sweets are mine. The name of Leonidas hath not sunk into oblivion, but the gifts of the Muses proclaim it to the end of days.

§ 7.716  DIONYSIUS OF RHODES
Too early and missed by all us who dwell in the city of Ialysus, hast thou sunk, Phaenocritus, into the sea of oblivion, after plucking for a brief time the flowers of wisdom; and round thy tomb the very owls that never shed tears lamented. No singer shall ever sing as thou didst to future generations as long as men walk upon their feet.

§ 7.717  Anonymous
Ye Naiads, and ye cool pastures, tell the bees that start for their spring journeys that old Lysippus perished lying in ambush for the fleet-footed hares on a winter night. No longer does he take joy in tending the swarms, and the dells where feed the flocks miss much their neighbour of the hill.(?)

§ 7.718  NOSSIS
Stranger, if thou sailest to Mitylene, the city of lovely dances which kindled (?) Sappho, the flower of the Graces, say that the Locrian land bore one dear to the Muses and equal to her and that her name was Nossis. Go!

§ 7.719  LEONIDAS
I am the tomb of Tellen, and under ground I hold the old man, who was the first to learn how to compose comic songs.

§ 7.720  CHAEREMON
Cleuas, the son of Etymocles, who didst wield the spear for Thyreae, thou didst die allotting to thyself the disputed land.

§ 7.721  CHAEREMON
We from Sparta engaged the Argives equal in number and in arms, Thyreae being the prize of the spear, and both abandoning without seeking for pretexts our hope of return home, we leave the birds to tell of our death.

§ 7.722  THEODORIDAS
I weep for Timosthenes, the son of Molossus, slain in battle, dying a stranger on the strange Attic soil.

§ 7.723  ANONYMOUS (Not Sepulchral)
Lacedaemon, formerly unconquered and uninvaded, thou seest the Olenian smoke on the banks of Eurotas. No shade of trees hast thou left; the birds nest on the ground and the wolves hear not the bleating of sheep.

§ 7.724  ANYTE
Thy valour, Proarchus, slew thee in the fight, and thou hast put in black mourning by thy death the house of thy father Phidias. But the stone above thee sings this good message, that thou didst fall fighting for thy dear fatherland.

§ 7.725  CALLIMACHUS
A. "MENECRATES of Aenus, you too were not long on earth. Tell me, best of friends, what caused your death? Was it that which caused the Centaur’s?" B. "The fore-ordained sleep came to me, and the unhappy wine is blamed."

§ 7.726  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
Old Platthis often repelled from her her evening and morning sleep, keeping poverty away, and near the door of gray old age used to sing a tune to her spindle and familiar distaff. Still by the loom until the dawn she revolved in company with the Graces that long task of Pallas, or, a loveable figure, smoothed with her wrinkled hand on her wrinkled knee the thread sufficient for the loom. Aged eighty years comely Platthis who wove so well set eyes on the lake of Acheron.

§ 7.727  THEAETETUS
Phileas seemed inferior to none in the gifts of his mind; let him who envies him go and cry himself to death. Yet but empty pleasure hath a man in fame, for in Hades Thersites is as highly honoured as Minos.

§ 7.728  CALLIMACHUS
I, the old woman who am now dust was once the priestess of Demeter and again of the Cabiri and afterwards of Cybele. I was the patroness of many young women. I had two male children and closed my eyes at a goodly old age in their arms. Go in peace.

§ 7.729  TYMNES
The omens were evil when fair Tritonis was brought to bed, for otherwise she would not have perished, unhappy girl, just after the child was born. With her this one babe brought down to Hades so much happiness, and it did not even live beyond the tenth dawn.
A form of imprecation.

§ 7.730  PERSES
Unhappy Mnasylla, why does it stand on thy tomb, this picture of thy daughter Neotima whom thou lamentest, her whose life was taken from her by the pangs of labour? She lies in her dear mother’s arms, as if a heavy cloud had gathered 011 her eyelids and, alas, not far away her father Aristoteles rests his head on his right hand. O most miserable pair, not even in death have ye forgotten your grief.

§ 7.731  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
"I am already supported only on a stick, like a vine on a stake; Death calls me to Hades. Stop not thy ears, Gorgus. What further pleasure hast thou in basking in the sun yet for three or four summers?" So speaking in no braggart strain the old man cast away his life and settled in the abode of the greater number.

§ 7.732  THEODORIDAS
Thou art gone, still without a staff, Cinesias, son of Hermolas, to pay the debt thou owest to Hades, in thy old age but bringing him thyself still complete. So all-subduing Acheron finding thee a just debtor shall love thee.

§ 7.733  DIOTIMUS
We two old women Anaxo and Cleno the twin daughters of Epicrates were ever together; Cleno was in life the priestess of the Graces and Anaxo served Demeter. We wanted nine days to complete our eightieth year. We loved our husbands and children, and we, the old women, won gentle death before them.

§ 7.734  ANONYMOUS
[text corrupt...] O old man, may thy blessed children too reach the road of gray age.

§ 7.735  DAMAGETUS
Phocaea, glorious city, these were the last words Theano spoke as she descended into the vast night: "Alas unhappy that I am, Apellichus! What sea, my husband, art thou crossing in thy swift ship? But by me death stands close, and would I could die holding thy dear hand in mine."

§ 7.736  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
Vex not thyself, O man, leading a vagrant life, rolled from one land to another. Vex not thyself if thou hast a little hut to cover thee, warmed by a little fire, if thou hast a poor cake of no fine meal kneaded by thy hands in a stone trough, if thou hast mint or thyme for a relish or even coarse salt not unsweetened.

§ 7.737  ANONYMOUS
Here I thrice unfortunate was slain by an armed robber, and here I lie bewept by none.

§ 7.738  THEODORIDAS
The Keys [Kleides] of Cyprus and the promontory of Salamis and the rude south wind destroyed thee, Timarchus, with thy ship and cargo, and thy mourning kinsmen received but the black ashes of thee, ill-fated man.

§ 7.739  PHAEDIMUS
I mourn for Polyanthus, O passer by, whom his wife Aristagora laid in the tomb, her newly wedded lord, receiving his ashes and dust (in the stormy Aegean near Sciathus he had perished) after the fishermen in the early morn had towed his corpse into the harbour of Torone.

§ 7.740  LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM
I am the stone that rests on Cretho and makes known his name, but Cretho is ashes underground, he who once vied with Gyges in wealth, who was lord of many herds and flocks, who — why need I say more? he who was blessed by all. Alas, what a little share of his vast lands is his!

§ 7.741  CRINAGORAS
Cite Othryadas, the great glory of Sparta, or Cynegeirus, the sea-fighter, or all great deeds of arms. The Italian warrior who lay by the streams of the Rhine, half dead from many wounds, when he saw the eagle of his dear legion seized by the enemy, again arose from amid the corpses of the slain and killing him who carried it, recovered it for his leaders, alone winning for himself a death that knew not defeat.

§ 7.742  APOLLONIDES (Not Sepulchral) No longer, Timoclea, hast thou lost the light of thy eyes, now thou hast given birth to twin boys, but thou art now more perfect than thou ever wast, looking with more than two eyes on the burning Chariot of the Sun.

§ 7.743  ANTIPATER OF SIDON
I, Hermocratea, bore twenty-nine children and have not seen the death of one, either boy or girl. For far from Apollo having shot down my sons and Artemis my daughters for me to lament, Artemis came to relieve me in childbed and Phoebus brought my sons to man’s estate unhurt by sickness. See how I justly surpass Niobe both in my children and in restraint of speech.

§ 7.744  DIOGENES LAERTIUS
They say that Eudoxus learnt his own fate in Memphis from the bull with beautiful horns. It spoke not, how could it? for nature has not given speech to cattle nor a talkative tongue to the calf Apis; but standing beside him it licked his cloak, evidently telling him this: "You will divest yourself of life." So he died shortly after, having seen fifty-three summers.

§ 7.745  ANTIPATER OF SIDON
Ibycus, the robbers slew thee when from the ship thou didst land on the untrodden desert shore. But first didst thou call on the flock of cranes who came to witness that thou didst die a most cruel death. And not in vain didst thou cry out, for through the calling of the cranes the Erinys avenged thy death in the land of Corinth. O ye race of robbers greedy of gain, why fear ye not the anger of the gods? Not even did Aegisthus, who of old slew the singer, escape the eyes of the dark-robed Furies.

§ 7.746  PYTHAGORAS
Here lies great Zan whom they call Zeus.

§ 7.747  LIBANIUS
Julian lies here on the further bank of the strong current of Tigris, "a good king and a valiant warrior."

§ 7.748  ANTIPATER OF SIDON
What one-eyed Cyclops built all this vast stone mound of Assyrian Semiramis, or what giants, sons of earth, raised it to reach near to the seven Pleiads, inflexible, unshakable, a mass weighing on the broad earth like to the peak of Athos? Ever blessed people, who to the citizens of Heraclea ...[missing]