Young Men of Sidon (400 A.D.)

The actor they had brought in to entertain them also recited a few choice epigrams. The room opened out on the garden, and a delicate odor of flowers mingled with the scent of the five perfumed young Sidonians. There were readings from Meleager, Krinagoras, Rhianos. But when the actor recited “Here lies Aeschylus, the Athenian, son of Euphorion” (stressing maybe more that he should have “his renowned valor” and “sacred Marathonian grove”), a vivacious young man, mad about literature, suddenly jumped up and said: “I don’t like that quatrain at all. Sentiments of that kind seem somehow weak. Give, I say, all your strength to your work, make it your total concern. And don’t forget your work even in times of trial or when you near your end. This is what I expect, what I demand of you— and not that you completely dismiss from your mind the magnificent art of your tragedies— your Agamemnon, your marvelous Prometheus, your representations of Orestes and Cassandra, your Seven Against Thebes—to set down for your memorial merely that as an ordinary soldier, one of the herd, you too fought against Datis and Artaphernis.”