dots-menu
×
Home  »  library  »  poem  »  Epitaph for Those Who Fell at Thermopylæ

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

Epitaph for Those Who Fell at Thermopylæ

By Simonides (c. 556–468 B.C.)

From a careful study of Simonides by John Sterling (Westminster Review, 1838)

OF those who at Thermopylæ were slain,

Glorious the doom, and beautiful the lot:

Their tomb an altar; men from tears refrain

To honor them, and praise, but mourn them not.

Such sepulchre, nor drear decay

Nor all-destroying time shall waste; this right have they.

Within their grave the home-bred glory

Of Greece was laid; this witness gives

Leonidas the Spartan, in whose story

A wreath of famous virtue ever lives.