Translation of Alma Strettell.

TO A COY MAIDEN

ASCLEPIADES (286 B.C.)

Believe me love, it is not good
To hoard a mortal maidenhood;
In Hades thou wilt never find,
Maiden, a lover to thy mind;
Love's for the living! presently
Ashes and dust in death are we!

Translation of Andrew Lang.

THE EMPTIED QUIVER

MNESALCUS (Second Century B.C.)

This bending bow and emptied quiver, Promachus hangs as a gift to thee,
Phoebus. The swift shafts men's hearts hold, whom they called to death
in the battle's rout.

Translation of Talcott Williams.

THE TALE OF TROY

ALPHEUS (First Century B.C.)

Still we hear the wail of Andromache, still we see all Troy toppling
from her foundations, and the battling Ajax, and Hector, bound to the
horses, dragged under the city's crown of towers,--through the Muse of
Maeonides, the poet with whom no one country adorns herself as her own,
but the zones of both worlds.

Translation of J.W. Mackail.

HEAVEN HATH ITS STARS

MARCUS ARGENTARIUS (First Century B.C.)

Feasting, I watch with westward-looking eye
The flashing constellations' pageantry,
Solemn and splendid; then anon I wreathe
My hair, and warbling to my harp I breathe
My full heart forth, and know the heavens look down
Pleased, for they also have their Lyre and Crown.

Translation of Richard Garnett.

PAN OF THE SEA-CLIFF

ARCHIAS (First Century B.C.)

Me, Pan, the fishermen placed upon this holy cliff,--Pan of the
sea-shore, the watcher here over the fair anchorages of the harbor: and
I take care now of the baskets and again of the trawlers off this shore.
But sail thou by, O stranger, and in requital of this good service of
theirs I will send behind thee a gentle south wind.

Translation of J.W. Mackail.

ANACREON'S GRAVE

ANTIPATER OF SIDON (First Century B.C.)

O stranger who passeth by the humble tomb of Anacreon, if thou hast had
aught of good from my books, pour libation on my ashes, pour libation of
the jocund grape, that my bones may rejoice, wetted with wine; so I, who
was ever deep in the wine-steeped revels of Dionysus, I who was bred
among drinking-tunes, shall not even when dead endure without Bacchus
this place to which the generation of