EPITAPH (Gr. epi, upon, and taphos, a hillock, mound, or other monument placed over a grave). From originally signifying a monument, this word is now used exclu sively to designate the inscription commemorative of the deceased which is placed upon the monument. This perversion may in some measure have arisen from the remem brance of the funeral orations which the ancients were in the habit of pronouncing at funerals. But the E., in its stricter sense, was well known to the classical nations of antiquity; and, indeed, by every people a brief commemoration of the heroic actions or personal virtues of their illustrious dead has been regarded as one of the worthiest occu pations of the faculties of the living. As epitaphs were not only engraved on the most 'enduring substances, but from their brevity were easily preserved in the memory and orally transmitted, wherever we find the literature of a people at all we are pretty sure to discover specimens of their epitaphs. Pettigrew has translated several from Egyp tian sarcophagi (Bohn's edition, p. 5), but they are of no great interest. Herodotus (vii. 228) has preserved to us those which the Amphictyons caused to be inscribed on the col umns which they raised in honor of the heroes of Thermopylae, and that which Simon ides, from personal friendship, placed on the tomb of the prophet Megistias. The gen eral inscription for the whole of them was to this effect: "Four thousand from Pelo ponnesus once fought on this spot with three hundred myriads;" and that which was special to the Spartans was still more memorable: " Stranger, go tell the Lacedemonians that we lie here obedient to their commands." The Anthologia Grceca, edited by Brunk, and subsequently by Jacobs, contains the largest collection of Greek epitaphs: of these many were translated and published by Bohn in 1854, under the editorial care of Mr. George Burges. Of Roman epitaphs, every antiquarian museum even in this country presents numerous examples; for the form in which they were conceived was adopted by our own Romanized forefathers, and many a stone bearing the well-known D. M. (Diis Manibus), or Siste Viator, probably covered the remains of those whose veins never con tained a drop of Roman blood. A very interesting collection of early Christian epitaphs
will be found in Dr. Charles Maitland's Church in the Catacombs, published in 1846. The naturally epigrammatic turn of the French mind peculiarly adapts it for this spe •cies of composition, and in French collections, such as the Jtecueil d'Epitaphes, very felicitous examples are to be found both in Latin and in French. Of the former may be mentioned the " Tandem felix!" which the count de Tenia, who had enjoyed every form of temporal prosperity, caused to be engraved on his tomb; and of the latter, the touching E. to a mother, " La premiere an rendez-vous." A large portion of the earlier monuments, and consequently of the epitaphs of this country, were destroyed at the reformation, and subsequently by the ineonoclastic rage of the Puritans and Presbyte rians. But when we come down to a later date, the literature of no people, either ancient •or modern, can vie with our own in this peculiar branch, for whilst English epitaphs possess the point and terseness without no E. can be successful, they exhibit is feature almost unknown in those of other nations—that, viz., of wit, or more properly speaking, perhaps, of humor. It seems as if the wittiest people in the world, as the English unquestionably are, had found it impossible to confine their raillery to the living, and accordingly we find that the harmless peculiarities of the dead have often been hit off on a tombstone, with a felicity which has rendered immortal what otherwise the next generation must have forgotten. Of this class of epitaphs our collections present an almost infinite variety. There are many excellent old collections of epitaphs, such as the Thesaurus Epitaphiorum of Philip Labbe, Paris, 1666. Of modern ones, the hest is that of Pettigrew, published by Bohn, which is so arranged as to mark the diversity •of taste prevailing at different periods of our history. See also the works of Grutcr, Grtesius, Reinesius, Muratori, Mazochius; the Monumenta Anglitana, London, 1719; Weaver's Ancient Funeral Monuments, etc.