Under the statue of a man reclining and holding a cup in his hand, Flavius
Agricola writes:[51] "Tibur was my native place; I was called Agricola,
Flavius too.... I who lie here as you see me. And in the world above in
the years which the fates granted, I cherished my dear soul, nor did the
god of wine e'er fail me.... Ye friends who read this, I bid you mix your
wine, and before death comes, crown your temples with flowers, and
drink.... All the rest the earth and fire consume after death." Probably
we should be wrong in tracing to the teachings of Epicurus, even in their
vulgarized popular form, the theory that the value of life is to be
estimated by the material pleasure it has to offer. A man's theory of life
is largely a matter of temperament or constitution. He may find support
for it in the teachings of philosophy, but he is apt to choose a
philosophy which suits his way of thinking rather than to let his views of
life be determined by abstract philosophic teachings. The men whose
epitaphs we have just read would probably have been hedonists if Epicurus
had never lived. It is interesting to note in passing that holding this
conception of life naturally presupposes the acceptance of one of the
notions of death which we considered above--that it ends all.

In another connection, a year or two ago, I had occasion to speak of the
literary merit of some of these metrical epitaphs,[52] of their interest
for us as specimens of the literary compositions of the common people, and
of their value in indicating the æsthetic taste of the average Roman. It
may not be without interest here to speak of the literary form of some of
them a little more at length than was possible in that connection. Latin
has always been, and continues to be among modern peoples, a favored
language for epitaphs and dedications. The reasons why it holds its
favored position are not far to seek. It is vigorous and concise. Then
again in English and in most modern languages the order which words may
take in a given sentence is in most cases inexorably fixed by grammatical