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Quote by Kallimachos

“They brought me word of your death, Heraklieitos, and I wept for you remembering how often we watched the sun setting as we talked. Dear Halikarnassian friend, you lie elsewhere now and are mere ashes; yet your songs—your nightingales—will live, and never will the underworld, destroying everything, touch them with its deadly hand.”

Quote by Kallimachos

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Kallimachos

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“I gave you wings to fly looming high and easy over unboarded sea and the entire earth. At every meal and banquet you will be present on the lips of guests. Graceful young men will sing of you in limpid lovely notes to the clean piping of the flutes. When you go under the dark vaults of earth to the mournful chambers of sad Hell, even when you lie dead you will not lose your glory. Your name will be recalled among men always, Kyrnos. You will wheel high over the mainland and Greek islands and cross the unharvested sea pulsing with fish, not by horse but carried to those who love you in the gifts of Muses capped in violet flowers. You will be like a song to the living as long as there is sun, earth. Yet you ignore me and trick me as if I were a child.”

“My nurse was the island of Tyros, and Attic land of Syrian Gadara was my birthplace. I was sired by Eukrates —I, Meleagros, friend of the Muses and first to waken to the Graces of Menippos. A Syrian? What if I am? Stranger, we all live in one country: the world. Out of one chaos were all men born. In my old age I traced these letters on the slab before my grave, knowing that old men are neighbors to death. Passerby, wish me well, the talkative old man, and you may also reach a loquacious old age.”