period, not breaking use and wont; all this is implied here rather
than expressed, in words so simple and straightforward that they seem
to have fallen by accident, as it were, into verse. Thus too in
another epigram the dying wife's last words are praise to the gods of
marriage that she has had even such a husband, and to the gods of
death that he and their children survive her.[13] Or again, where
there is a cry of pain over severance, it is the sweetness of the past
life that makes parting so bitter; "what is there but sorrow," says
Marathonis over the tomb of Nicopolis,[14] "for a man alone upon earth
when his wife is gone?"
----------

[1] Anth. Pal. ix. 649.

[2] Ibid. vi. 267, 280, 340.

[3] Ibid. vi. 226, vii. 156.

[4] {Dunatai to ploutein kai philanthropous poiein}, Menand., {Alieis}
fr. 7; Anth. Pal. ix. 172.

[5] Anth. Pal. vi. 308, ix. 326.

[6] Ibid. v. 297.

[7] Ibid. vi. 266.

[8] Ibid. vi. 353, v. 124.

[9] Ibid. vi. 59.