SELECT EPIGRAMS FROM THE GREEK ANTHOLOGY
INTRODUCTION - XIV: Death
OF THESE prodigious natural forces the strongest and the most imposing is Death. Here, if anywhere, the Greek genius had its fullest scope and most decisive triumph; and here it is that we come upon the epigram in its inmost essence and utmost perfection. "Waiting to see the end" as it always did, the Greek spirit pronounced upon the end when it came with a swiftness, a tact, a certitude that leave all other language behind. For although Latin and not Greek is pre-eminently and without rival the proper and, one might almost say, the native language of monumental inscription, yet the little difference that fills inscriptions with imagination and beauty, and will not be content short of poetry, is in the Greek temper alone. The Roman sarcophagus, square hewn of rock, and bearing on it, incised for immortality, the haughty lines of rolling Republican names, represents to us with unequalled power the abstract majesty of human States and the glory of law and government; and the momentary pause in the steady current of the life of Rome, when one citizen dropped out of rank and another succeeded him, brings home to us with crushing effect, like some great sentence of Tacitus, the brief and transitory worth of a single life. Qui apicem gessisti, mors perfecit tua ut essent omnia brevia, honos fama virtusque, gloria atque ingenium[1]—words like these have a melancholy majesty that no other human speech has known; nor can any greater depth of pathos be reached than is in the two simple words Bene merenti on a hundred Roman tombs. But the Greek mind here as elsewhere came more directly than any other face to face with the truth of things, and the Greek genius kindled before the vision of life and death into a clearer flame.
Epigrams on Death
Introduction, next chapter: Criticism on Life / Back to the Table of Contents
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