C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Epitaph on Ennius

By Ennius (239–169 B.C.)

In the companion inscription intended for himself, Ennius brings two familiar thoughts into rather striking association. Tennyson’s ‘Crossing the Bar’ has lifted the first to a far nobler level.

NO one may honor my funeral rites with tears or lamenting.

Why? Because still do I pass, living, from lip unto lip.

An iambic couplet, quoted from “Ennius, in the third book of his Satires,” may be echoed thus:—

HAIL, Ennius the poet, who for mortal men

Thy flaming verses pourest from thy marrow forth!

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