Touching tomb inscriptions from the ancients, in Greek and Latin, with English tranlsations.
The universal sentiments expressed in this anthology of inscriptions and epitaphs portray a poignant slice of ancient lives: their joy in the temporal life, their grief at its passing, and their faith in an eternal life of bliss. Rest Lightly includes 29 tomb inscriptions and an additional 13 plates/illustrations from the 1st through the 7th centuries with transcriptions, annotations and verse translations into English.
Join hearts with our ancient family as they celebrate the lives and mourn the deaths of their beloved children and friends, sisters and brothers, wives and lovers.
Special Features
- Introduction with chapters on the Value of Tomb Inscriptions, the Underworld, the Study of Tomb Inscriptions, and Women and Children
- Edited text of thirty inscriptions
- Line drawings
- Notes and English translations
- Thirteen plates
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The charm, poignancy, timelessness, and beauty of these epitaphs will immediately remind us of the brevity of life and of the everlastingness of the emotional response to loss, suffering and grief.
Edith Kovach
University of Detroit
A collection of various epitaphs, this brief volume offers interesting insights into the feelings of ancient people, their emotional response to loss, their approach to death, with the grief and suffering it entails. They are real human documents of a timeless beauty and poignancy...
The Journal of Indo-European Studies
Volume 26, Number 1 & 2, Spring/Summer 1998
Professor Shore’s survey will serve the interested reader in two important ways by offering not only concrete evidence concerning Greco-Roman antiquity, but also valuable insight into an ineluctable aspect of our common humanity, mainly, our morality.
Michele Ronnick
Wayne State University
This is a scholarly yet accessible work...We heartly recommend this book...
This is a scholarly yes accessible work where the author presents 30 lively and interesting tomb inscriptions to give insight into the culture of the Greco-Roman era. In its unique, off-beat approach, the book will be of interest to school age students, but, as it is well illustrated, with a layout and format that make it easily approachable, the text will interest just about who picks it up.
I found that I first went through the book enjoying the variety of the sayings, and then read the text later. Here were four concise sections explaining the value of the study of tomb inscriptions, an overview of Greco-Roman ideas of the afterlife, a history of the study of inscriptions, and the author's criteria for making the particular selections offered in this book.
The tone of the presentation is enjoyable, and the inscriptions themselves oftern have a whimiscal quality which allows us to feel closer to those who lived and died over a thousand years ago. Many of the ideas which we hold as our own, and pride as being modern take a decidedly ancient bent. There is a tomb of "an ancient existentialist", or note the second century Roman inscription: "These are the bones of Pompeia's eldest daughter, fortune promises much to many, but grants it to none. Live for the day and the hour, for nothing is our own. Salvius and Eros erected this stone."
We heartily recommend this book for the excellent way that is has combined layout and content. The themes of the epitaphs are universal, and in this way they reveal a transcendent viewpoint to the reader. The ancients are brought closer in a clear and unhurried milieu.
Abrams
Inner Journeys, Volume VII, No.1 and 2
