seemed sufficient for them to think about what they knew of.[17] The
revolution which Christianity brought into men's way of thinking as
regards life and death was that it made them know more certainly, or
so it seemed, about the latter than about the former. Who knows,
Euripides had long ago asked, if life be not death, and death life?
and the new religion answered his question with an emphatic
affirmation that it was so; that this life was momentary and shadowy,
was but a death, in comparison of the life unchangeable and eternal.

The dedicatory epigram was one of the earliest forms of Greek poetry.
Herodotus quotes verses inscribed on offerings at Thebes, written in
"Cadmean letters," and dating back to a mythical antiquity;[18] and
actual dedications are extant which are at least as early as 600
B.C.[19] In this earlier period the verses generally contained nothing
more than a bare record of the act. Even at a later date, the
anathematic epigrams of Simonides are for the most part rather stiff
and formal when set beside his epitaphs. His nephew Bacchylides
brought the art to perfection, if it is safe to judge from a single
flawless specimen.[20] But it is hardly till the Alexandrian period
that the dedication has elaborate pains bestowed upon it simply for
the feeling and expression as a form of poetry; and it is to this
period that the mass of the best prayers and dedications belong.

Ranging as they do over the whole variety of human action, these
epigrams show us the ancient world in its simplest and most pleasant
aspect. Family life has its offerings for the birth of a child, for
return from travel, for recovery from sickness. The eager and curious
spirit of youth, and old age to which nothing but rest seems good,
each offer prayer to the guardians of the traveller or of the
home.[21] The most numerous and the most beautiful are those where,