The old village churchyard on a summer afternoon is a favorite spot with
many of us. The absence of movement, contrasted with the life just outside
its walls, the drowsy humming of the bees in the flowers which grow at
will, the restful gray of the stones and the green of the moss give one a
feeling of peace and quiet, while the ancient dates and quaint lettering
in the inscriptions carry us far from the hurry and bustle and trivial
interests of present-day life. No sense of sadness touches us. The stories
which the stones tell are so far removed from us in point of time that
even those who grieved at the loss of the departed have long since
followed their friends, and when we read the bits of life history on the
crumbling monuments, we feel only that pleasurable emotion which, as
Cicero says in one of his letters, comes from our reading in history of
the little tragedies of men of the past. But the epitaph deals with the
common people, whom history is apt to forget, and gives us a glimpse of
their character, their doings, their beliefs, and their views of life and
death. They furnish us a simple and direct record of the life and the
aspirations of the average man, the record of a life not interpreted for
us by the biographer, historian, or novelist, but set down in all its
simplicity by one of the common people themselves.
These facts lend to the ancient Roman epitaphs their peculiar interest and
charm. They give us a glimpse into the every-day life of the people which
a Cicero, or a Virgil, or even a Horace cannot offer us. They must have
exerted an influence, too, on Roman character, which we with our changed
conditions can scarcely appreciate. We shall understand this fact if we
call to mind the differences between the ancient practices in the matter
of burial and our own. The village churchyard is with us a thing of the
past. Whether on sanitary grounds, or for the sake of quiet and seclusion,
in the interest of economy, or not to obtrude the thought of death upon
us, the modern cemetery is put outside of our towns, and the memorials in
it are rarely read by any of us. Our fathers did otherwise. The churchyard
of old England and of New England was in the middle of the village, and
"short cuts" from one part of the village to another led through its
enclosure. Perhaps it was this fact which tempted our ancestors to set
forth their life histories more fully than we do, who know that few, if
any, will come to read them. Or is the world getting more reserved and
sophisticated? Are we coming to put a greater restraint upon the
expression of our emotions? Do we hesitate more than our fathers did to
talk about ourselves? The ancient Romans were like our fathers in their
willingness or desire to tell us of themselves. Perhaps the differences in
their burial practices, which were mentioned above, tempted them to be
communicative, and sometimes even garrulous. They put their tombstones in
a spot still more frequented than the churchyard. They placed them by the
side of the highways, just outside the city walls, where people were
coming or going constantly. Along the Street of Tombs, as one goes out of
Pompeii, or along the great Appian Way, which runs from Rome to Capua,
Southern Italy and Brundisium, the port of departure for Greece and the
Orient, they stand on both sides of the roadway and make their mute
appeals for our attention. We know their like in the enclosure about old
Trinity in New York, in the burial ground in New Haven, or in the
churchyards across the water. They tell us not merely the date of birth
and death of the deceased, but they let us know enough of his life to
invest it with a certain individuality, and to give it a flavor of its
own.
Some 40,000 of them have come down to us, and nearly 2,000 of the
inscriptions upon them are metrical. This particular group is of special
interest to us, because the use of verse seems to tempt the engraver to go
beyond a bare statement of facts and to philosophize a bit about the
present and the future. Those who lie beneath the stones still claim some
recognition from the living, for they often call upon the passer-by to
halt and read their epitaphs, and as the Roman walked along the Appian Way
two thousand years ago, or as we stroll along the same highway to-day, it
is in silent converse with the dead. Sometimes the stone itself addresses
us, as does that of Olus Granius:[22] "This mute stone begs thee to stop,
stranger, until it has disclosed its mission and told thee whose shade it
covers. Here lie the bones of a man, modest, honest, and trusty--the
crier, Olus Granius. That is all. It wanted thee not to be unaware of
this. Fare thee well." This craving for the attention of the passer-by
leads the composer of one epitaph to use somewhat the same device which
our advertisers employ in the street-cars when they say: "Do not look at
this spot," for he writes: "Turn not your eyes this way and wish not to
learn our fate," but two lines later, relenting, he adds: "Now stop,
traveller...within this narrow resting-place,"[23] and then we get the
whole story. Sometimes a dramatic, lifelike touch is given by putting the
inscription into the form of a dialogue between the dead and those who are
left behind. Upon a stone found near Rome runs the inscription:[24]
"Hail, name dear to us, Stephanus,...thy Moschis and thy Diodorus salute
thee." To which the dead man replies: "Hail chaste wife, hail Diodorus,
my friend, my brother." The dead man often begs for a pleasant word from
the passer-by. The Romans, for instance, who left Ostia by the highway,
read upon a stone the sentiment:[25] "May it go well with you who lie
within and, as for you who go your way and read these lines, 'the earth
rest lightly on thee' say." This pious salutation loses some of the flavor
of spontaneity in our eyes when we find that it had become so much of a
convention as to be indicated by the initial letters of the several words:
S(it) t(ibi) t(erra) l(evis). The traveller and the departed exchange good
wishes on a stone found near Velitræ:[26]
"May it go well with you who read and you who pass this way,
The like to mine and me who on this spot my tomb have built."
One class of passers-by was dreaded by the dweller beneath the stone--the
man with a paint-brush who was looking for a conspicuous spot on which to
paint the name of his favorite political candidate. To such an one the
hope is expressed "that his ambition may be realized, provided he
instructs his slave not to paint this stone."[27]
These wayside epitaphs must have left an impress on the mind and character
of the Roman which we can scarcely appreciate. The peasant read them as he
trudged homeward on market days, the gentleman, as he drove to his villa
on the countryside, and the traveller who came from the South, the East,
or the North. In them the history of his country was set forth in the
achievements of her great men, her prætors and consuls, her generals who
had conquered and her governors who had ruled Gaul, Spain, Africa, and
Asia. In them the public services, and the deeds of charity of the rich
and powerful were recorded and the homely virtues and self-sacrifices of
the humbler man and woman found expression there. Check by jowl with the
tomb of some great leader upon whom the people or the emperor had showered
all the titles and honors in their power might stand the stone of the poor
physician, Dionysius,[28] of whom it is said "to all the sick who came to
him he gave his services free of charge; he set forth in his deeds what he
taught in his precepts."
But perhaps more of the inscriptions in verse, and with them we are here
concerned, are in praise of women than of men. They make clear to us the
place which women held in Roman life, the state of society, and the
feminine qualities which were held in most esteem. The world which they
portray is quite another from that of Ovid and Juvenal. The common people
still hold to the old standards of morality and duty. The degeneracy of
smart society has made little progress here. The marriage tie is held
sacred; the wife and husband, the parent and child are held close to each
other in bonds of affection. The virtues of women are those which
Martinianus records on the stone of his wife Sofroniola:[29]
"Purity, loyalty, affection, a sense of duty, a yielding nature, and
whatever qualities God has implanted in women."
(Castitas fides earitas pietas obsequium Et quaecumque deus faemenis
inesse praecepit.)
Upon a stone near Turin,[30] Valerius wrote in memory of his wife the
simple line:
"Pure in heart, modest, of seemly bearing, discreet, noble-minded, and
held in high esteem."
(Casta pudica decens sapiens Generosa probata.)
Only one discordant note is struck in this chorus of praise. This fierce
invective stands upon an altar at Rome:[31] "Here for all time has been
set down in writing the shameful record of the freedwoman Acte, of
poisoned mind, and treacherous, cunning, and hard-hearted. Oh! for a nail,
and a hempen rope to choke her, and flaming pitch to burn up her wicked
heart."
A double tribute is paid to a certain Statilia in this naïve
inscription:[32] "Thou who wert beautiful beyond measure and true to thy
husbands, didst twice enter the bonds of wedlock...and he who came first,
had he been able to withstand the fates, would have set up this stone to
thee, while I, alas! who have been blessed by thy pure heart and love for
thee for sixteen years, lo! now I have lost thee." Still greater sticklers
for the truth at the expense of convention are two fond husbands who
borrowed a pretty couplet composed in memory of some woman "of tender
age," and then substituted upon the monuments of their wives the more
truthful phrase "of middle age,"[33] and another man warns women, from the
fate of his wife, to shun the excessive use of jewels.[34]
It was only natural that when men came to the end of life they should ask
themselves its meaning, should speculate upon the state after death, and
should turn their thoughts to the powers which controlled their destiny.
We have been accustomed to form our conceptions of the religion of the
Romans from what their philosophers and moralists and poets have written
about it. But a great chasm lies between the teachings of these men and
the beliefs of the common people. Only from a study of the epitaphs do we
know what the average Roman thought and felt on this subject. A few years
ago Professor Harkness, in an admirable article on "The Scepticism and
Fatalism of the Common People of Rome," showed that "the common people
placed no faith in the gods who occupy so prominent a place in Roman
literature, and that their nearest approach to belief in a divinity was
their recognition of fate," which "seldom appears as a fixed law of
nature...but rather as a blind necessity, depending on chance and not on
law." The gods are mentioned by name in the poetic epitaphs only, and for
poetic purposes, and even here only one in fifty of the metrical
inscriptions contains a direct reference to any supernatural power. For
none of these deities, save for Mother Earth, does the writer of an
epitaph show any affection. This feeling one may see in the couplet which
reads:[35] "Mother Earth, to thee have we committed the bones of
Fortunata, to thee who dost come near to thy children as a mother," and
Professor Harkness thoughtfully remarks in this connection that "the love
of nature and appreciation of its beauties, which form a distinguishing
characteristic of Roman literature in contrast to all the other
literatures of antiquity, are the outgrowth of this feeling of kinship
which the Italians entertained for mother earth."
It is a little surprising, to us on first thought, that the Roman did not
interpose some concrete personalities between himself and this vague
conception of fate, some personal agencies, at least, to carry out the
decrees of destiny. But it will not seem so strange after all when we
recall the fact that the deities of the early Italians were without form
or substance. The anthropomorphic teachings of Greek literature, art, and
religion found an echo in the Jupiter and Juno, the Hercules and Pan of
Virgil and Horace, but made no impress on the faith of the common people,
who, with that regard for tradition which characterized the Romans,
followed the fathers in their way of thinking.
A disbelief in personal gods hardly accords with faith in a life after
death, but most of the Romans believed in an existence of some sort in the
world beyond. A Dutch scholar has lately established this fact beyond
reasonable doubt, by a careful study of the epitaphs in verse.[36] One
tombstone reads:[37]
"Into nothing from nothing how quickly we go,"
and another:[38]
"Once we were not, now we are as we were,"
and the sentiment, "I was not, I was, I am not, I care not" (non fui, fui,
non sum, non euro) was so freely used that it is indicated now and then
merely by the initial letters N.f.f.n.s.n.c., but compared with the great
number of inscriptions in which belief in a life after death finds
expression such utterances are few. But how and where that life was to be
passed the Romans were in doubt. We have noticed above how little the
common people accepted the belief of the poets in Jupiter and Pluto and
the other gods, or rather how little their theology had been influenced by
Greek art and literature. In their conception of the place of abode after
death, it is otherwise. Many of them believe with Virgil that it lies
below the earth. As one of them says in his epitaph:[39]
"No sorrow to the world below I bring."
Or with other poets the departed are thought of as dwelling in the Elysian
fields or the Isles of the Blessed. As one stone cries out to the
passer-by:[40] "May you live who shall have said. 'She lives in Elysium,'"
and of a little girl it is said:[41] "May thy shade flower in fields
Elysian." Sometimes the soul goes to the sky or the stars: "Here lies the
body of the bard Laberius, for his spirit has gone to the place from
which it came;"[42] "The tomb holds my limbs, my soul shall pass to the
stars of heaven."[43] But more frequently the departed dwell in the tomb.
As one of them expresses it: "This is my eternal home; here have I been
placed; here shall I be for aye." This belief that the shade hovers about
the tomb accounts for the salutations addressed to it which we have
noticed above, and for the food and flowers which are brought to satisfy
its appetites and tastes. These tributes to the dead do not seem to accord
with the current Roman belief that the body was dissolved to dust, and
that the soul was clothed with some incorporeal form, but the Romans were
no more consistent in their eschatology than many of us are.
Perhaps it was this vague conception of the state after death which
deprived the Roman of that exultant joy in anticipation of the world
beyond which the devout Christian, a hundred years or more ago, expressed
in his epitaphs, with the Golden City so clearly pictured to his eye, and
by way of compensation the Roman was saved from the dread of death, for
no judgment-seat confronted him in the other world. The end of life was
awaited with reasonable composure. Sometimes death was welcomed because it
brought rest. As a citizen of Lambsesis expresses it:[44] "Here is my home
forever; here is a rest from toil;" and upon a woman's stone we read:[45]
"Whither hast thou gone, dear soul, seeking rest from troubles,
For what else than trouble hast thou had throughout thy life?"
But this pessimistic view of life rarely appears on the monuments. Not
infrequently the departed expresses a certain satisfaction with his life's
record, as does a citizen of Beneventum, who remarks:[46] "No man have I
wronged, to many have I rendered services," or he tells us of the pleasure
which he has found in the good things of life, and advises us to enjoy
them. A Spanish epitaph reads:[47] "Eat, drink, enjoy thyself, follow me"
(es bibe lude veni). In a lighter or more garrulous vein another says:[48]
"Come, friends, let us enjoy the happy time of life; let us dine merrily,
while short life lasts, mellow with wine, in jocund intercourse. All
these about us did the same while they were living. They gave, received,
and enjoyed good things while they lived. And let us imitate the practices
of the fathers. Live while you live, and begrudge nothing to the dear soul
which Heaven has given you." This philosophy of life is expressed very
succinctly in: "What I have eaten and drunk I have with me; what I have
foregone I have lost,"[49] and still more concretely in:
"Wine and amours and baths weaken our bodily health,
Yet life is made up of wine and amours and baths."[50]
Under the statue of a man reclining and holding a cup in his hand, Flavius
Agricola writes:[51] "Tibur was my native place; I was called Agricola,
Flavius too.... I who lie here as you see me. And in the world above in
the years which the fates granted, I cherished my dear soul, nor did the
god of wine e'er fail me.... Ye friends who read this, I bid you mix your
wine, and before death comes, crown your temples with flowers, and
drink.... All the rest the earth and fire consume after death." Probably
we should be wrong in tracing to the teachings of Epicurus, even in their
vulgarized popular form, the theory that the value of life is to be
estimated by the material pleasure it has to offer. A man's theory of life
is largely a matter of temperament or constitution. He may find support
for it in the teachings of philosophy, but he is apt to choose a
philosophy which suits his way of thinking rather than to let his views of
life be determined by abstract philosophic teachings. The men whose
epitaphs we have just read would probably have been hedonists if Epicurus
had never lived. It is interesting to note in passing that holding this
conception of life naturally presupposes the acceptance of one of the
notions of death which we considered above--that it ends all.
In another connection, a year or two ago, I had occasion to speak of the
literary merit of some of these metrical epitaphs,[52] of their interest
for us as specimens of the literary compositions of the common people, and
of their value in indicating the æsthetic taste of the average Roman. It
may not be without interest here to speak of the literary form of some of
them a little more at length than was possible in that connection. Latin
has always been, and continues to be among modern peoples, a favored
language for epitaphs and dedications. The reasons why it holds its
favored position are not far to seek. It is vigorous and concise. Then
again in English and in most modern languages the order which words may
take in a given sentence is in most cases inexorably fixed by grammatical
necessity. It was not so with Latin. Its highly inflected character made
it possible, as we know, to arrange the words which convey an idea in
various orders, and these different groupings of the same words gave
different shades of meaning to the sentence, and different emotional
effects are secured by changing the sequence in which the minor
conceptions are presented. By putting contrasted words side by side, or at
corresponding points in the sentence, the impression is heightened. When a
composition takes the form of verse the possibilities in the way of
contrast are largely increased. The high degree of perfection to which
Horace brought the balancing and interlocking of ideas in some of his
Odes, illustrates the great advantage which the Latin poet had over the
English writer because of the flexibility of the medium of expression
which he used. This advantage was the Roman's birthright, and lends a
certain distinction even to the verses of the people, which we are
discussing here. Certain other stylistic qualities of these metrical
epitaphs, which are intended to produce somewhat the same effects, will
not seem to us so admirable. I mean alliteration, play upon words, the
acrostic arrangement, and epigrammatic effects. These literary tricks find
little place in our serious verse, and the finer Latin poets rarely
indulge in them. They seem to be especially out of place in an epitaph,
which should avoid studied effects and meretricious devices. But writers
in the early stages of a literature and common people of all periods find
a pleasure in them. Alliteration, onomatopœia, the pun, and the play on
words are to be found in all the early Latin poets, and they are
especially frequent with literary men like Plautus and Terence, Pacuvius
and Accius, who wrote for the stage, and therefore for the common people.
One or two illustrations of the use of these literary devices may be
sufficient. A little girl at Rome, who died when five years old, bore the
strange name of Mater, or Mother, and on her tombstone stands the
sentiment:[53] "Mater I was by name, mater I shall not be by law."
"Sepulcrum hau pulcrum pulcrai feminae" of the famous Claudia
inscription,[54] Professor Lane cleverly rendered "Site not sightly of a
sightly dame." Quite beyond my power of translating into English, so as to
reproduce its complicated play on words, is the appropriate epitaph of the
rhetorician, Romanius lovinus:[55]
"Docta loqui doctus quique loqui docuit."
A great variety of verses is used in the epitaphs, but the dactylic
hexameter and the elegiac are the favorites. The stately character of the
hexameter makes it a suitable medium in which to express a serious
sentiment, while the sudden break in the second verse of the elegiac
couplet suggests the emotion of the writer. The verses are constructed
with considerable regard for technique. Now and then there is a false
quantity, an unpleasant sequence, or a heavy effect, but such blemishes
are comparatively infrequent. There is much that is trivial, commonplace,
and prosaic in these productions of the common people, but now and then
one comes upon a phrase, a verse, or a whole poem which shows strength or
grace or pathos. An orator of the late period, not without vigor, writes
upon his tombstone:[56] "I have lived blessed by the gods, by friends, by
letters."
(Vixi beatus dis, amicis, literis.)
A rather pretty, though not unusual, sentiment occurs in an elegiac
couplet to a young girl,[57] in which the word amoena is the adjective,
meaning "pleasant to see," in the first, while in the second verse it is
the girl's name: "As a rose is amoena when it blooms in the early spring
time, so was I Amoena to those who saw me."
(Ut rosa amoena homini est quom primo tempore floret.
Quei me viderunt, seic Amoena fui.)
There is a touch of pathos in the inscription which a mother put on the
stone of her son:[58] "A sorrowing mother has set up this monument to a
son who has never caused her any sorrow, except that he is no more," and
in this tribute of a husband:[59] "Out of my slender means now that the
end has come, my wife, all that I could do, this gift, a small small one
for thy deserts, have I made." The epitaph of a little girl, named
Felicia, or Kitty, has this sentiment in graceful verse:[60] "Rest lightly
upon thee the earth, and over thy grave the fragrant balsam grow, and
roses sweet entwine thy buried bones." Upon the stone of a little girl who
bore the name of Xanthippe, and the nickname Iaia, is an inscription with
one of two pretty conceits and phrases. With it we may properly bring to
an end our brief survey of these verses of the common people of Rome. In a
somewhat free rendering it reads in part:[61] "Whether the thought of
death distress thee or of life, read to the end. Xanthippe by name, yclept
also Iaia by way of jest, escapes from sorrow since her soul from the body
flies. She rests here in the soft cradle of the earth,... comely,
charming, keen of mind, gay in discourse. If there be aught of compassion
in the gods above, bear her to the sun and light."