Page:Modern Greek folklore and ancient Greek religion - a study in survivals.djvu/613

 The tone of the epitaphs may be sufficiently illustrated by a single couplet:

[Greek: Ouk epidôn nympheia lechê katebên ton aphykton Gorgippos xanthês Phersephonês thalamon].

'I, Gorgippus, lived not to look upon a bridal bed ere I went down to the chamber of bright-haired Persephone which none may escape.' There is naturally here a note of lament, as befits any epitaph, and more especially that of one who dies young and unmarried; but none the less there is an anticipation—justified, we may think, if we will, by some ceremony of bridal ablution performed for the dead man by his friends—that his death is a wedding with the goddess of the under-world; and indeed the phrase [Greek: Phersephonês thalamos], 'the bridal chamber of Persephone,' recurs with some frequency in this class of epitaphs.

Considered collectively, such epitaphs would suggest a distinctly offensive conception of Persephone; but in each taken separately, as it was composed, it will be allowed, I think, that if there is supreme audacity, there is equal sublimity. It is just these qualities which give pungency to a blasphemous parody of such epitaphs, in which the wit of Ausonius exposes the worst possible aspect of a religious conception which to the pure-minded was wholly pure. My apology for quoting lines which I will not translate must be the fact that a caricature is often no less instructive than a true portrait. The mock epitaph concludes as follows:

Sed neque functorum socius miscebere vulgo Nec metues Stygios flebilis umbra lacus: Verum aut Persephonae Cinyreius ibis Adonis, Aut Jovis Elysii tu catamitus eris.

Ausonius in jest bears an unpleasant resemblance to Clement in earnest; both perverted to their uttermost a doctrine which commanded nothing but reverence from faithful participants in the mysteries.

Akin to these epitaphs are certain tablets which recently have