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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!