Some 40,000 of them have come down to us, and nearly 2,000 of the inscriptions upon them are metrical.  This particular group is of special interest to us, because the use of verse seems to tempt the engraver to go beyond a bare statement of facts and to philosophize a bit about the present and the future.  Those who lie beneath the stones still claim some recognition from the living, for they often call upon the passer-by to halt and read their epitaphs, and as the Roman walked along the Appian Way two thousand years ago, or as we stroll along the same highway to-day, it is in silent converse with the dead.  Sometimes the stone itself addresses us, as does that of Olus Granius:[22] “This mute stone begs thee to stop, stranger, until it has disclosed its mission and told thee whose shade it covers.  Here lie the bones of a man, modest, honest, and trusty—­the crier, Olus Granius.  That is all.  It wanted thee not to be unaware of this.  Fare thee well.”  This craving for the attention of the passer-by leads the composer of one epitaph to use somewhat the same device which our advertisers employ in the street-cars when they say:  “Do not look at this spot,” for he writes:  “Turn not your eyes this way and wish not to learn our fate,” but two lines later, relenting, he adds:  “Now stop, traveller...within this narrow resting-place,"[23] and then we get the whole story.  Sometimes a dramatic, lifelike touch is given by putting the inscription into the form of a dialogue between the dead and those who are left behind.  Upon a stone found near Rome runs the inscription:[24] “Hail, name dear to us, Stephanus,...thy Moschis and thy Diodorus salute thee.”  To which the dead man replies:  “Hail chaste wife, hail Diodorus, my friend, my brother.”  The dead man often begs for a pleasant word from the passer-by.  The Romans, for instance, who left Ostia by the highway, read upon a stone the sentiment:[25] “May it go well with you who lie within and, as for you who go your way and read these lines, ’the earth rest lightly on thee’ say.”  This pious salutation loses some of the flavor of spontaneity in our eyes when we find that it had become so much of a convention as to be indicated by the initial letters of the several words:  S(it) t(ibi) t(erra) l(evis).  The traveller and the departed exchange good wishes on a stone found near Velitrae:[26]

    “May it go well with you who read and you who pass this way,
    The like to mine and me who on this spot my tomb have built.”

One class of passers-by was dreaded by the dweller beneath the stone—­the man with a paint-brush who was looking for a conspicuous spot on which to paint the name of his favorite political candidate.  To such an one the hope is expressed “that his ambition may be realized, provided he instructs his slave not to paint this stone."[27]