C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Epitaph for Those Who Fell at Thermopylæ
By Simonides (c. 556–468 B.C.)
From a careful study of Simonides by John Sterling (Westminster Review, 1838)
O
Glorious the doom, and beautiful the lot:
Their tomb an altar; men from tears refrain
To honor them, and praise, but mourn them not.
Such sepulchre, nor drear decay
Nor all-destroying time shall waste; this right have they.
Within their grave the home-bred glory
Of Greece was laid; this witness gives
Leonidas the Spartan, in whose story
A wreath of famous virtue ever lives.