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,...