Epitaph on Himself.

Youth, even though thou art hurrying, this stone asks a boon of thee:

That thou wilt gaze upon it, then read what its gravings tell. Here are the bones of Pacuvius Marcus, the poet, laid.

I could wish this, all unknowing what thou mayst be. Farewell.

ATTIUS or ACCIUS.

[Born B.c. 170; lived to a great age, as Cicero when a young man (3.c. 85– 80) frequently conversed with him. His tragedies are praised by the ancients for vigor of language and elevation of thought. He also wrote annals in verse, like Ennius; and prose works.]

Tarquin

Dialogue between Tarquin and the Diviners.

When at night's urgency I gave my frame

To rest, and soothed my languid limbs with sleep,
A shepherd seemed in slumber to accost me.

Two kindred rams were chosen from the flock,

A fleecy treasure of a beauty rare;
Whereof I slew the fairer on an altar.
Then did his fellow with his horns essay
To butt, and overthrew me on the ground;
Where as I lay sore wounded in the dirt,
I gazed on heaven, and there beheld a sad
And wondrous sign: the fiery ray-girt sun
Passed back in strange disorder to his right.

Diviners

Good my liege, it is no marvel if the forms of waking thought,
Care, and sight, and deed, and converse, all revisit us in sleep:
But we may not pass regardless sight so unforedeemed as this.
Wherefore see lest one thou thinkest stupid as the flocks that graze
Bear a heart with choicest wisdom purified and fortified,
And expel thee from thy kingdom. For the portent of the sun
Shows there is a change impending o'er the people of thy sway.
May the gods avert the omen! it is near! the mighty star
From his left to right returning, shows thee clearly as his light
That the Roman people's greatness shall become supreme at last.

A Shepherd describes his First Sight of a Ship.

The monster bulk sweeps on

Loud from the deep, with mighty roar and panting.
It hurls the waves before; it stirs up whirlpools;
On, on it bounds; it dashes back the spray.
Awhile, it seems a bursting tempest cloud;

Awhile, a rock uprooted by the winds,
And whirled aloft by hurricane; or masses
Beaten by concourse of the crashing waves;
The sea seems battering o'er the wrecks of land;
Or Triton, from their roots the caves beneath
Upturning with his trident, flings to heaven
A rocky mass from out the billowy deep.

LUCILIUS.

[Born B.C. 148, at Suessa, on the Santa Croce mountains; died 103, at Naples. He served under Scipio in Spain; and is said to have been a granduncle, if not grandfather, of Pompey the Great. Roman writers proclaim him a satirist of immense vigor and great poetic force, the founder of Roman satiric poetry in its artistic form, and by some regarded as the greatest of all in his own class.]

The Ideal of Life.

VIRTUE, Albinus, is the power to give
Their due to objects amid which we live;
What each possesses, faithfully to scan;
To know the right, the good, the true for man;
Again to know the wrong, the base, the ill;
What we should seek, and how we should fulfill;
Honor and wealth at their true worth to prize;
Ill men and deeds repudiate, hate, despise ;
Good men and deeds uphold, promote, defend,
Exalt them, seek their welfare, live their friend;
To place our country's interests first alone;
Our parents' next; the third and last, our own.

Debating in Place of Action.

But now from morning till night, work-day and holiday too,
The whole day just the same, people and Senate alike
Bustle about in the Forum, and never keep quiet a moment,
Each singly devoting himself to the self-same study and art,
To bandy words with the utmost wariness, fighting with craft,
Vying in outward politeness, and plotting with counterfeit airs
Of being virtuous men as if each were the foe of the rest.

Græcomania in Rome.

Albucius, rather by the name of Greek
Than Roman or of Sabine, countryman
Of the Centurions, Pontius and Tritannius,
Distinguished men, our foremost, standard-bearers,
You would be called. As pretor of Athens, then,
Greek as you wgn, when you approach, I hail you:

"Chære," I say, "O Titus." And my lictors,
My escort, all my staff, repeat with me,

"Chære, O Titus." Then from hence, Albucius,
You are my private and my public foe.

The Superstitious Man.

The hobgoblins and bogies set up from Faunus and Numa Pompilius, He trembles before them, there's nothing he does not credit them with;

As babies imagine all figures of bronze are alive and are men,

So such persons believe that those figments are true, and that souls Indwell in these statues of bronze, - painters' blocks, nothing true, all a fable.

VARRO.

[The most learned and one of the most voluminous writers of Rome; he credits himself with writing 490 books. Born в.c. 116, and deeply studied in Roman antiquities and Greek philosophy, he entered public life, held high naval command against the pirates and Mithradates, was Pompey's legate in Spain, and held to his side at Pharsalia. Pardoned by Cæsar and employed in arranging the great public library, he lived in retirement, but was proscribed by the second triumvirate; his life was spared, however, and he died B.C. 28 under Augustus. His "Menippean Satires" formed a model for Petronius, Seneca, Julian, and others.]

From "Marcipor."

All suddenly, about the noon of night,

When far the sky, bedropt with fervid fires,
Displayed the starry firmamental dance,
The racking clouds, with cold and watery veil,
Closed up the golden hollows of the heaven,
Spouting on mortals Stygian cataracts.
The winds, the frantic offspring of the North,
Burst from the frozen pole, and swept along
Tiles, boughs, and hurricanes of whelming dust.
But we, poor trembling shipwrecked men, like storks
Whose wings the double-pinioned thunderbolt
Hath scorched, fell prone in terror on the ground.

From "Prometheus Free."

I am become like outer bark, or tops

Of oaks that in the forest die with drought;

My blood is drained; my color wan with anguish;
No mortal hears me; only Desolation,
That dwells abroad on Scythia's houseless plains.
My spirit ne'er parleys with sleep-gendered forms;
No shade of slumber rests upon my eyelids.

TO SAVE A SISTER.

BY GEORG EBERS.

(From "The Sisters," a novel of the time of Ptolemy Euergetes, B.c. 164.)

[GEORG MORITZ EBERS: German Egyptologist and novelist; born at Berlin, March 1, 1837. He was educated at Göttingen and Berlin, and lectured for a while at Jena. In 1870 he became professor of Egyptian archæology at Leipsic, resigning in 1889 on account of ill health. Besides several important works on Egyptology, he has published a series of historical novels treating of ancient Egyptian life, which have enjoyed extraordinary popularity not only in Germany, but in other countries. The best known are: "An Egyptian Princess," "Uarda," ," "Homo Sum," "The Sisters," "Serapis," "The Bride of the Nile," and "Cleopatra." Also popular are: "In the Fire of the Forge," "The Burgomaster's Wife," and "Gred."]

THE Greek temple of Serapis, to which the water-carriers belonged, was joined to the Egyptian of Osiris-Apis by a fine paved street for the use of processions; and along this Klea now rapidly proceeded. There was a shorter road to Memphis; but she chose this because the hills of sand on each side of the street bordered by Sphinxes, which had every day to be cleared of the desert drift, hid her from the sight of her companions in the temple; moreover, the best and safest way to the city was by a road starting from a crescent, adorned with busts of philosophers, which lay near the main entrance to the new Apis tombs.

She looked neither at the lion bodies with men's heads which guarded the road, nor at the figures of beasts on the wall inclosing it; nor did she heed the dusky temple slaves of OsirisApis, who with large brooms were sweeping the sand from the paved road for she thought of nothing but Irene and the difficult task that lay before her, and walked swiftly onward with her eyes on the ground.

But she had taken only a few steps when she heard her name called quite near, and looking up in alarm she found herself standing opposite Krates, the little smith, who came close up to her, took hold of her veil, threw it back a little before she could prevent him, and asked:

"Where are you going, child?"

"Do not keep me back," besought Klea.

"You know that

Irene, whom you were always so fond of, has been carried off; perhaps I may be able to save her, but if you betray me and they follow me

"I will not hinder you," interrupted the old man. "Indeed, if it were not for these swollen feet I would go with you, for I can think of nothing else but the poor dear little thing; but as it is, I shall be glad enough when I am sitting still again in my shop; it is just as if a workman of my own trade lived in each of my big toes, and was dancing round in them with hammer and file and chisel and nails. Very likely you may be lucky enough to find your sister, for a cunning woman succeeds in many things which are too hard for a wise man. Go on, and if they hunt for you, old Krates will not betray you."

He nodded kindly at Klea, and had half turned his back on her when he again looked round and called to her:

"Wait a minute, my girl: you can do me a little service. I have just fitted a new lock to the door of the Apis tomb over there. It works finely, but the one key I have made for it is not enough: we need four, and you must order them for me from the locksmith Heri, to be sent me day after to-morrow; he lives opposite the gate of Sokari -to the left, next the bridge over the canal - you can't miss it. I hate repeating and copying as much as I like inventing and making new things, an Heri can work from a pattern as well as I can. If it were not for my legs I would give him the commission myself, for one who speaks by the lips of a go-between is often misunderstood or not understood at all."

"I will gladly save you the walk," replied Klea; while the smith sat down on the pedestal of one of the Sphinxes, and opening the leather wallet which hung by his side, shook out the contents. Some files, chisels, and nails fell out into his lap; then the key, and finally a sharp, pointed knife with which Krates had cut out the hollow in the door to insert the lock. Krates touched up the pattern key for the smith in Memphis with a few strokes of the file, and then, muttering thoughtfully and shaking his head doubtfully from side to side, he exclaimed:

"You must come once more yet to the door with me, for I insist on accurate work from other people, and so I must be stern with my own."

"But I want so much to reach Memphis before dark," besought Klea.

"The whole thing won't take a minute, and if you will give me your arm I shall go twice as fast. There, here are the files, and here is the knife."