Parentalia — A Second Preface Cast in Verse

Names of my dear ones long honourably buried — names that were once mourned with tears — shall now be recalled in verse. What though it leave them bare undecked, and unadorned with well polished phrase? The funereal tribute is offering enough to the departed. O Dirge, so ready to do service with plaints for the dead, forget not thy yearly tribute to these silent ones — that tribute which Numa ordained should be offered year by year to the shades of our relatives, according as the nearness of their death or kinship demands. For the buried, as for those who lack earth to cover them, one rite suffices: to call on the soul by name counts for the full ceremony. Our dead ones laid to rest rejoice to hear their names: and thus even the lettered stones above their graves would have us do. Even he who lacks the sad urn of burial will be well-nigh as though interred, if his name be uttered thrice. But you, my reader, whosoe'er you be, who deign to recall in these sad plaints the deaths of those I loved, may you pass your span of life without a shock, and never have to mourn a death save in the course of nature.