“Whither hast thou gone, dear soul, seeking rest from troubles,
    For what else than trouble hast thou had throughout thy life?”

But this pessimistic view of life rarely appears on the monuments.  Not infrequently the departed expresses a certain satisfaction with his life’s record, as does a citizen of Beneventum, who remarks:[46] “No man have I wronged, to many have I rendered services,” or he tells us of the pleasure which he has found in the good things of life, and advises us to enjoy them.  A Spanish epitaph reads:[47] “Eat, drink, enjoy thyself, follow me” (es bibe lude veni).  In a lighter or more garrulous vein another says:[48] “Come, friends, let us enjoy the happy time of life; let us dine merrily, while short life lasts, mellow with wine, in jocund intercourse.  All these about us did the same while they were living.  They gave, received, and enjoyed good things while they lived.  And let us imitate the practices of the fathers.  Live while you live, and begrudge nothing to the dear soul which Heaven has given you.”  This philosophy of life is expressed very succinctly in:  “What I have eaten and drunk I have with me; what I have foregone I have lost,"[49] and still more concretely in: 

    “Wine and amours and baths weaken our bodily health,
    Yet life is made up of wine and amours and baths."[50]

Under the statue of a man reclining and holding a cup in his hand, Flavius Agricola writes:[51] “Tibur was my native place; I was called Agricola, Flavius too....  I who lie here as you see me.  And in the world above in the years which the fates granted, I cherished my dear soul, nor did the god of wine e’er fail me....  Ye friends who read this, I bid you mix your wine, and before death comes, crown your temples with flowers, and drink....  All the rest the earth and fire consume after death.”  Probably we should be wrong in tracing to the teachings of Epicurus, even in their vulgarized popular form, the theory that the value of life is to be estimated by the material pleasure it has to offer.  A man’s theory of life is largely a matter of temperament or constitution.  He may find support for it in the teachings of philosophy, but he is apt to choose a philosophy which suits his way of thinking rather than to let his views of life be determined by abstract philosophic teachings.  The men whose epitaphs we have just read would probably have been hedonists if Epicurus had never lived.  It is interesting to note in passing that holding this conception of life naturally presupposes the acceptance of one of the notions of death which we considered above—­that it ends all.