"Sepulcrum hau pulcrum pulcrai feminae" of the famous Claudia
inscription,[54] Professor Lane cleverly rendered "Site not sightly of a
sightly dame." Quite beyond my power of translating into English, so as to
reproduce its complicated play on words, is the appropriate epitaph of the
rhetorician, Romanius lovinus:[55]


"Docta loqui doctus quique loqui docuit."

A great variety of verses is used in the epitaphs, but the dactylic
hexameter and the elegiac are the favorites. The stately character of the
hexameter makes it a suitable medium in which to express a serious
sentiment, while the sudden break in the second verse of the elegiac
couplet suggests the emotion of the writer. The verses are constructed
with considerable regard for technique. Now and then there is a false
quantity, an unpleasant sequence, or a heavy effect, but such blemishes
are comparatively infrequent. There is much that is trivial, commonplace,
and prosaic in these productions of the common people, but now and then
one comes upon a phrase, a verse, or a whole poem which shows strength or
grace or pathos. An orator of the late period, not without vigor, writes
upon his tombstone:[56] "I have lived blessed by the gods, by friends, by
letters."

(Vixi beatus dis, amicis, literis.)

A rather pretty, though not unusual, sentiment occurs in an elegiac
couplet to a young girl,[57] in which the word amoena is the adjective,
meaning "pleasant to see," in the first, while in the second verse it is
the girl's name: "As a rose is amoena when it blooms in the early spring
time, so was I Amoena to those who saw me."