It has been well said that this melancholy idea was conveyed in the quiet sadness of that one word “Vale,” or in the more impassioned repetition of it, “Vale, Vale dulcissima--semper in perpetuo vale.” Farewell, farewell, sweetest one--for ever farewell. Now and again a favourite pagan formula was summed up in two words--“fuisti; vale.” Some of the pagan epitaphs are playfully sarcastic, as: “Ah, weary traveller, however far you may walk, you must come here at last.” Some even make a mock at death, bidding others enjoy themselves while they live. “Live for the present hour, drink and play, for you are sure of nothing, only what you eat and drink is really yours.” “Fortune makes many promises but keeps none of them; live then for the present hour, since nothing else is really yours.” Some epitaphs are bitter: “I lived as I like, but I don’t know why I died.” “Here it is, so it is, nothing else could be.” Here an inscription on a young woman’s grave mourns her early death: “I lift up my hands against the God who took me away at the age of twenty, though I had done no harm.” A father thus grieves for the loss of his child: “The fates judged ill when they robbed me of you.” Father and mother often write themselves down as most wretched, most unhappy (“miserrimi-infelicissimi”). Sometimes they use these sad and cheerless terms of their dead children. Mothers now and again describe themselves as “left to tears and groans,” or as “condemned to perpetual darkness and daily sad lamentation.” Parents lament their dead child thus: “Our hope was in our boy; now all is ashes and mourning.” Frequently these mourn for their dead children as follows: “They have died without having deserved it.” Another parent bewails the child’s death in these terms: “Neither talent, nor amiability, nor loving winning ways, have been of any avail to prolong the child’s days; in spite of all this, he has become the foul prey of the cruel Pluto.” On very many indeed of pagan tombs undoubtedly there is evidence of much love and deep affection for the departed, but there is no gleam of hope of reunion or of happiness in another life; indeed, as a rule, there is no other life hinted at. If any venture to look beyond the grave--which is rarely the case--all _beyond_ the grave is dark and sad and melancholy. The following words put into the mouth of a dead girl well voice this general feeling: “Here I lie, unhappy girl, in darkness.” “Traveller, curse me not as you pass,” moans another inscription, “for I am in darkness and cannot answer.” III