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Theocritus, 300 BC-260 BC

"Theocritus, translated into English Verse"



X.
For a Statue of the Muses.
To you this marble statue, maids divine,
Xenocles raised, one tribute unto nine.
Your votary all admit him: by this skill
He gat him fame: and you he honours still.

XI.
Epitaph of Eusthenes.
Here the shrewd physiognomist Eusthenes lies,
Who could tell all your thoughts by a glance at your eyes.
A stranger, with strangers his honoured bones rest;
They valued sweet song, and he gave them his best.
All the honours of death doth the poet possess:
If a small one, they mourned for him nevertheless.

XII.
For a Tripod Erected by Damoteles to Bacchus.
The precentor Damoteles, Bacchus, exalts
Your tripod, and, sweetest of deities, you.
He was champion of men, if his boyhood had faults;
And he ever loved honour and seemliness too.

XIII.
For a Statue of Anacreon.
This statue, stranger, scan with earnest gaze;
And, home returning, say "I have beheld
Anacreon, in Teos; him whose lays
Were all unmatched among our sires of eld."
Say further: "Youth and beauty pleased him best;"
And all the man will fairly stand exprest.

XIV.
Epitaph of Eurymedon.
Thou hast gone to the grave, and abandoned thy son
Yet a babe, thy own manhood but scarcely begun.
Thou art throned among gods: and thy country will take
Thy child to her heart, for his brave father's sake.


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