Re: Ancient atheists

From: Henk Langeveld <hlangeveld_at_mailworks.org>
Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2004 02:13:37 +0100

Mittmann, Mike wrote:
> Hmmm, I got it off the web somewhere, so it's not that reliable. (
> "All facts are on the web, all true facts and all false facts")
>
> However by searching for a random line of the poem I got to this
> page: http://www.lamp.ac.uk/~noy/death4.htm
>
> Which is written to imply that the writer of the page has a handout
 > showing the tombstone.
>
> I'll leave further research to you :-)

Thanks, I found the following, after all:

Professor Joseph L. Rife

Department of Classics
Macalester College

  CLAS 50-07: DEATH, BURIAL AND SOCIETY IN THE ANCIENT WORLD RIFE, FALL 2002 SELECTION OF ANCIENT EPITAPHS
http://www.macalester.edu/~rife/courses/clas5007/ISS.html

(translations adapted from P. Shore, Rest Lightly: an Anthology of Latin and Greek Tomb Inscriptions [Wauconda 1997])

1. Epitaph of a cynic (Rome, 3rd century C.E. ?; EG 646)

To the dead spirit of Cerelia Fortunata, my most precious wife, with whom for eleven years I lived without a single quarrel. Do not pass by my epitaph, traveler, but when you have stopped, hear and learn, then depart.
There is no boat to carry you to Hades,
no ferryman Charon, no judge Aeacus, no dog Cerberus. All of us below have become bones and ashes. Truly, I have nothing more to tell you.
So depart, traveler, lest dead though I am I seem to you to be a teller of vain lies. Do not favor this monument with sweet smelling oils or garlands, for it is but a stone.
Do not feed the funeral flames, it is a waste of money. If you can give, give while I live.
Pouring wine on the ashes will only turn them to mud, and besides the dead will not drink.
For so I shall be. And you have heaped up earth on these remains, say that what this was, it will never be again.

--__--__--

End of Glorantha Digest