XLV
ON A MOTHER, DEAD IN CHILDBIRTH
DIODORUS OF SARDIS

These woeful letters of Diodorus' wisdom tell that I was engraven for
one early dead in child-birth, since she perished in bearing a boy;
and I weep to hold Athenais the comely daughter of Melo, who left
grief to the women of Lesbos and her father Jason; but thou, O
Artemis, wert busy with thy beast-slaying hounds.


XLVI
ON A MOTHER OF EIGHTEEN, AND HER BABY
AUTHOR UNKNOWN

Name me Polyxena wife of Archelaus, child of Theodectes and hapless
Demarete, and a mother as far as the birth-pangs; but fate overtook
the child before full twenty suns, and myself died at eighteen years,
just a mother and just a bride, so brief was all my day.


XLVII
ON A YOUNG WIFE
AUTHOR UNKNOWN

To his wife Paulina, holy of life and blameless, who died at nineteen
years, Andronicus the physician paying memorial placed this witness
the last of all.