An epitaph from Thebes[256] seems to have been erected over a soldier of the Sacred War: ‘When young I cultivated merriment (εὐφροσύνην ἤσκουν) associating with my companions in the gymnasium. I die in war, bearing aid to the Delphic land. My grandfather was Euenoridas, my father Neon.’ In this epigram notes quite unfamiliar to the Christian world are struck. The deceased had fallen on what might have passed as a crusade, an expedition to punish the sacrilegious aggression of the Phocians on the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Yet instead of dwelling on such religious merit, the epitaph speaks of his cheeriness of disposition and his sociability, of his worship of the ‘goddess fair and free, in heaven yclept Euphrosyne.’ In fact no quality is more often mentioned with praise in sepulchral inscriptions than the social habits of the deceased. An inscription of the same age from Athens[257] seems to record the success of a comic actor, who is praised especially for having overcome his natural disqualification for his pursuit: ‘All Hellas admires thee, Euthias, and misses thee in the sacred festivals; nor without cause. For through art, not natural gift, in vine-crowned comedy of gentle mirth thou wast second in rank, but first in art.’ In athletic sports also we learn that the spectators most applauded those who won by science, not mere strength. Another contemporary inscription from Athens[258] is in more poetic form: ‘Divine Modesty, daughter of high-minded Shame, one who valued above all thee and warlike Valour, Cleidemus of Melita son of Cleidemides is here buried.’ It will be observed that all the epigrams hitherto cited are from the graves of men, not women. Indeed, inscriptions from women’s tombs very seldom, at this early time, contain more than the name with that of father or husband. Generally speaking, until the time of Alexander, the women of Greece were content to shine with borrowed light, and to be notable in the home rather than in the city. Of sculptural honour they had, as we have seen, even more than their share; but to praise a woman in public might well seem to her friends to approach indelicacy. In the later age inscriptions recording female worth are frequent. There is no question that as the public life of Greece decayed, women became more and more prominent in the cities. It is not easy to assign, on epigraphic grounds, an exact date to sepulchral inscriptions of the third and later centuries down to Roman Imperial times. Partly for this reason, and partly because the later epitaphs of Greece really form one class, I prefer to group them rather by subject than by period. Generally speaking, they have more literary pretensions than earlier epitaphs, and their character is more personal and subjective, so that they give us information on many subjects as to which early inscriptions are silent.