borrowed a pretty couplet composed in memory of some woman "of tender
age," and then substituted upon the monuments of their wives the more
truthful phrase "of middle age,"[33] and another man warns women, from the
fate of his wife, to shun the excessive use of jewels.[34]

It was only natural that when men came to the end of life they should ask
themselves its meaning, should speculate upon the state after death, and
should turn their thoughts to the powers which controlled their destiny.
We have been accustomed to form our conceptions of the religion of the
Romans from what their philosophers and moralists and poets have written
about it. But a great chasm lies between the teachings of these men and
the beliefs of the common people. Only from a study of the epitaphs do we
know what the average Roman thought and felt on this subject. A few years
ago Professor Harkness, in an admirable article on "The Scepticism and
Fatalism of the Common People of Rome," showed that "the common people
placed no faith in the gods who occupy so prominent a place in Roman
literature, and that their nearest approach to belief in a divinity was
their recognition of fate," which "seldom appears as a fixed law of
nature...but rather as a blind necessity, depending on chance and not on
law." The gods are mentioned by name in the poetic epitaphs only, and for
poetic purposes, and even here only one in fifty of the metrical
inscriptions contains a direct reference to any supernatural power. For
none of these deities, save for Mother Earth, does the writer of an
epitaph show any affection. This feeling one may see in the couplet which
reads:[35] "Mother Earth, to thee have we committed the bones of
Fortunata, to thee who dost come near to thy children as a mother," and
Professor Harkness thoughtfully remarks in this connection that "the love
of nature and appreciation of its beauties, which form a distinguishing
characteristic of Roman literature in contrast to all the other
literatures of antiquity, are the outgrowth of this feeling of kinship