PHILEMON.

Born at Syracuse. Flourished B.C. 330. Celebrated as a writer of comedy. He lived, it is said, to the great age of 101 years.

INDULGING SORROW USELESS (Philem. Frag. p. 328).
Translated by C.

If tears to pain could bring relief,
And always weeping end our grief,
Who then the moisten'd cheek would dry,
And not with gold such solace buy?

But tears avail not, nor avert

The shaft of sorrow from the heart.

Yet fall they will, 'tis Heaven's decree,

In grief, as blossoms from the tree.

Palladas has an epigram on the sorrows of life which cause our tears continually to flow. The translation is by Shepherd (Jacobs III. 135, cii.):

In tears I came into this world of woe;

In tears I sink into the shades below;

In tears I pass'd through life's contracted span

Such is the hapless state of feeble man:

Crawling on earth, his wretched lot he mourns,

And thankful to his native dust returns.

Spenser, in “The Teares of the Muses," makes Melpomene say:
For all man's life me seemes a tragedy,
Full of sad sights and sore catastrophes;
First coming to the world with weeping eye,
Where all his dayes, like dolorous trophees,

Are heapt with spoyles of fortune and of feare,
And he at last laid forth on balefull beare.

The first stanza of an Ode by Yalden, "Against Immoderate Grief,"

is very similar to the epigram of Philemon.

It is said to be

In

imitation of Casimir," a modern Latin poet, born in Poland in 1595. who very probably took his idea from the Greek:

Could mournful sighs or floods of tears, prevent
The ills unhappy men lament;
Could all the anguish of my mind
Remove my cares, or make but Fortune kind;
Soon I'd the grateful tribute pay,

And weep my troubled thoughts away:
To wealth and pleasure every sigh prefer,
And more than gems esteem each falling tear.

MENANDER.

Flourished B.C. 321. He was born at Athens, and was held in the highest estimation as a writer of Comedy.

GREEK TOMBS (Menandri Reliq. Ed. Amstel, 1709, p. 276).
Translated by C.

Go to the road-side graves thyself to know,
Muse on the bones and dust that sleep below;
There sleeps the monarch, there the despot lies,
The rich, the proud, the beautiful, the wise.
Mown down by time these found a common tomb,
And tell thee what thou art and what thy doom.

An epigram on "The Tombs in Westminster," which is, however, only an amplification of Menander's, by Francis Beaumont, is of great beauty:

Mortality, behold and fear,

What a change of flesh is here!
Think how many royal bones,

Sleep within these heaps of stones;

Here they lie, had realms and lands;

Who now want strength to stir their hands.

Where from their pulpits seal'd with dust,

They preach, in greatness is no trust.

Here's an acre sown indeed,

With the richest, royal'st seed,

That the earth did e'er suck in,

Since the first man died for sin:

Here the bones of birth have cried,

Though gods they were, as men they died:

Here are sands, ignoble things.

Dropt from the ruin'd sides of kings,

Here's a world of pomp and state

Buried in dust, once dead by fate.

On the general idea contained in Menander's lines, of Time levelling all distinctions, Plato has a distich of much beauty (Jacobs I. 106, xix.). Translated by C.

Time changes all things; and beneath his sway

Names, beauty, wealth, e'en Nature's powers, decay.

THE BEST PRAYER (Menandri Reliq. Ed. Amstel, 1709, p. 276).
Translated by C.

Ask not of Heaven a life from sorrow free,
But that in sorrow thou resign'd may'st be.

The advice of the wise heathen accords with the language of the devout Christian ("Christian Year," 16th Sunday after Trinity):

Wish not, dear friends, my pain away

Wish me a wise and thankful heart,
With God, in all my griefs, to stay,
Nor from his lov'd correction start.

NOSSIS.

A poetess born at Locri, in Italy. She flourished about B.C. 320.
ON THE STATUE OF A DAUGHTER (Jacobs I. 128, vii.).
Translated by D.

This breathing image shows Melinna's grace,
Her own sweet form I see-her speaking face;
The mother's youth's recall'd,-the father blest
Beholds his honour in his child confest.

Bishop Wordsworth of Lincoln, in his "Pompeian Inscriptions," 1846, gives the following from a wall in Pompeii, a painful reverse of the picture which the epigram presents:

Zetema

Mulier ferebat filium simulem sui,

Nec meus est, nec mî simulat, sed vellem esset meus,

Et ego volebam ut meus esset.

Which requires, adds Dr. Wordsworth, no other explanation than the epigram of Nossis, or the

Laudantur simili prole puerpera

of Horace (Odes IV. 5, 21).

We may compare Shakespeare in "A Winter's Tale" (Act II. sc. 3):

Behold, my lords,

Although the print be little, the whole matter

And copy of the father: eye, nose, lip,

The trick of his frown, his forehead; nay, the valley,

The pretty dimples of his chin, and cheek; his smiles;

The very mould and frame of hand, nail, finger.

In the 3rd of his sonnets Shakespeare has:

Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime.

ANYTE.

A native of Tegea. Called by Antipater, "The Female Homer." Flourished about B.C. 280.

THE WOODLAND GROT (Jacobs I. 131, vii.).

Translated by C.

Stranger, by this worn rock thy limbs repose,
Soft thro' the verdant leaves the light wind blows:
Here drink from the cool spring. At noon-day heat
Such rest to way-worn traveller is sweet.

There is another epigram in the Anthology, which may be compared with this. The author is unknown. The translation is by Shepherd

(Jacobs IV. 194, ccclxiii.):

In yonder thicket springs the secret rill,
Whose streams perennial my green margin fill;
O'er my clear waters, bubbling cool below,
Laurels and elms their dusky shadows throw.
When fierce at noontide glows the summer's heat,
Here, way-worn traveller! rest thy weary feet:
Here quench thy thirst, in listless luxury laid,

And court sweet slumbers in the grateful shade.

A pretty description of a woodland scene, such as these epigrams bring before the eye, was "Inscribed on the back of a landscape, drawn by the Rev. William Bree," by Anna Seward :

Here, from the hand of genius, meets your eye

The tangled foliage of a shadowy dell;
Meets it in Nature's truth;-and see, the brook
Thro' yon wild thicket work its way oblique,
Hurrying and dashing thro' the lonely wood.

EPITAPH ON A YOUNG GIRL (Jacobs I. 134, xxii.).
Translated by Bishop Blomfield in "Museum Criticum."
I mourn Antibia-whose paternal gate

Unnumber'd suitors throng'd, her love to gain;
For she was fair and wise-but envious Fate

Forbade; and all their amorous hopes are vain.

Marullus, a learned Greek of the 16th century, who was celebrated for his Latin poetry, has an epitaph in that language, which has much resemblance in thought, though not in expression, to that by

Anyte. It is on Albina, translated by Whaley in his "Collection of
Original Poems and Translations," 1745, p. 293:

Here fair Albina lies, yet not alone;
That was forbid by Cytherea's son:
His quiver, arrows, and his bow lie here,
And Beauty's self lay lifeless on her bier.
Strew roses then, and violets round her shower,
She that's now dust, was yesterday a flower.

LEONIDAS OF TARENTUM.

Flourished B.C. 280. An epitaph, which he composed for himself. shows that he was an exile from his native land, and it is conjectured that he was carried away captive by Phyrrhus, King of Epirus.

ON THE PICTURE OF VENUS ANADYOMENE
(Jacobs I. 164, xli.).

Translated by C.

Fresh rising from the ocean foam,
Her mother's breast, her native home,
Apelles saw Love's queen display
Her matchless form bedash'd with spray.
Each grace he saw, and drawing near,
On breathing canvas fix'd them here.
See, from her hair her slender fingers
Press out the salt dew where it lingers;
See, in those mild, love-breathing eyes,
Her soft glance languishingly dies;
Whilst shews each gently-swelling breast,
Like the ripe apples of the west :
And Juno weeps, and Pallas sighs-
She's lovelier far! We yield the prize.

This celebrated picture was painted for the temple of Esculapius at Cos. It is said that Campaspe, the most beautiful woman of her time, sat for Venus, and that, while painting, Apelles fell in love with the model, whom he afterwards married.

Praxiteles in sculpture rivalled Apelles in painting. His statue of Venus at Cnidos, was one of his most celebrated works, and, according to the story, surprised even the goddess herself. There is a wellknown Greek epigram upon it by an unknown author. The following