Two epitaphs for a boy poet

A little out of town on the Via Ostiense is the Centrale Montemartini, one of the most evocative of Rome's archaeological museums. None of the artworks here is especially famous, but as an ensemble, they suggestively contrast their setting -- a disused power station, its massive boiler and engines still in situ. No museum is more photogenic.

Among the sculptural curiosities relegated to the Centrale Montemartini is the inscribed marble frontage that once announced the tomb of one Quintus Sulpicius Maximus, a boy of eleven buried beside the Via Salaria. Evidently he was a prodigy: in AD 94 he performed a hexameter poem of his own composition in a literary festival held by Domitian (you can read about these 'Capitoline Games' on Wikipedia).

The Museum website has a good picture of the monument in ts present home. An old article about it by J. R. Morgan (1903) can be read online for free as plain text, though it's also on JStor if you have access to that.

Quintus had composed his little epic in Greek, and at the foot of the monument are two separate epitaphs for the boy, also in Greek. Here is the first:

And here are the two poems in Morgan's translations, which he calls literal but which have some literary flavour. The first closely echoes Callimachus' famous 'They told me, Heraclitus' (AP 7.80) at its close:

Though but a lad of twelve short years was I,  

I left this contest for the land of shades.  

Disease and weariness reft me away,  

For of the Muses dreamed I, morning, noon, and night.  

I pray you for the sake of this poor lad,  

Pause here and see his off-hand verses' dainty grace.  

And speak through falling tears, with gracious lips  

This single prayer, 'Fare thou to Elysian land.' 

For thou hast left here living nightingales,  

Which greedy-handed Pluto ne'er shall seize. 

How slight this token of our love; and yet thy fame to heaven shall come. 

Oh, Maximus, by thee the Pierian Muses have been far outdone.  

Nor nameless didst thou bow to ruthless fate,  

Which gave thy song no lethal lot.  

No one with tearless eyes thy tomb shall pass,  

Beholding here thy verses, row on row.  

Thy glory is secure, for not unknown  

Shalt thou repose, gazed on by humbler shades. 

The Centrale Montemartini is worth a visit. Go!