In the seventh century BCE, the Greek warrior-poet Archilochus addresses a mourning friend.
Hear the Greek and follow in English here.
See the illustrated blog post here.
Around 650 BCE, mourning a brother-in-law lost at sea, the warrior-poet Archilochus tells his friend that sorrow is something that the Gods expect us to endure. The illustration shows mourners from a Greek vase of the sixth century BCE. Archilochus is the earliest poet of personal experience that we have from Greece: learn more about him on his poet page here.
Hear the poem in Greek and follow in English here.
The loss of a loved one is hard, but it has inspired some very beautiful poetry. This selection begins with Catullus’s
farewell to a beloved brother.
In this poem, the inspiration for a famous English translation, Callimachus remembers his
Catullus expresses both consolation and desire in his half-serious lament for
Archilochus, the seventh-century BCE warrior-poet, explains that
Finally, in the Elysian fields Aeneas is shown Marcellus, Augustus’s tragically short-lived
See the index to Pantheon Poets’ selections of poetry on a theme here.
See and hear a selection of poems by Catullus, Virgil, Callimachus and Archilochus on the theme of loss and mourning here.