Orations

^16. This, Cæsarius, is my funeral offering to you, this the firstfruits of my words, which you have often blamed me for withholding, yet would have stripped off, had they been bestowed on you; with this ornament I adorn you, an ornament, I know well, far dearer to you than all others, though it be not of the soft flowing tissues of silk, in which while living, with virtue for your sole adorning, you did not, like the many, rejoice; nor texture of transparent linen, nor outpouring of costly ointments, which you had long resigned to the boudoirs of the fair, with their sweet savours lasting but a single day; nor any other small thing valued by small minds, which would have all been hidden today with your fair form by this bitter stone. Far hence be games and stories of the Greeks, the honours of ill-fated youths, with their petty prizes for petty contests; and all the libations and firstfruits or garlands and newly plucked flowers, wherewith men honour the departed, in obedience to ancient custom and unreasoning grief, rather than reason. My gift is an oration, which perhaps succeeding time will receive at my hand and ever keep in motion, that it may not suffer him who has left us to be utterly lost to earth, but may ever keep him whom we honour in men's ears and minds, as it sets before them, more clearly than a portrait, the image of him for whom we mourn.