Capitolo 52
truthful sentence "of middle age, " [33] and another man warns women from the,
the fate of his/her wife, to avoid the excessive use of jewels. [34]
It was only natural that when men ended them you/they should ask
them its meaning, should speculate on the state after death, and
you/he/she should turn their thoughts to the powers that checked their destiny.
We have been accustomed for forming our conceptions of the religion of the
Romans from what you/they have written their philosophers and moralists and poets
around him. But a great abyss lies among the teachings of these men and
the beliefs of the common people. Only from a study of the epitaphs does us
knows that that the Roman and middle thought and felt on this subject. Some years
ago Teacher Harkness, in an admirable article on "The Skepticism and
The fatalism of the People Common of Rome", it showed that "the common people
not envoy faith in the of the that they occupy so prominent a place in Roman
literature, and that their more approach next to belief in a divinity was
their recognition of fate" of which "it rarely seems a fixed law
nature... but rather as a blind necessity, depending on opportunity and not on
law." The of the are only mentioned by name in the poetic epitaphs, and for
poetic purposes, and even here only one in fifty of the metrical
registrations contain a direct reference to some supernatural power. For
none of these divinities, rescue for Earth of Mother is a writer of a
show of epitaph some affection. This sensitive can see in the couplet that
reads:[35] Earth of "Mother, to thee we have committed the bones of
Fortunate, to thee that dosts come near to children of thy as a mother" and
Thoughtfully teacher Harkness comments in this connection that "the love
of nature and the appreciation of his/her beauties that form a distinguishing
characteristic of the Roman literature in contrast to all the other
the literatures of the antiquity, are the bulge of this feeling of relative
what Italians entertained for earth of mother."