REPETITIONS, SECOND SERIES
Graves of Our Ancestors
We should guard our dead and their power, lest that at
some hour
our opponents would unearth them and take them away.
And then, without their protection, we’d be risking double.
How will we live any longer without our houses, our
furniture, our fields, especially without the graves of our
ancestors, the warriors and wise? Let us remember
the Spartans who stole the bones of Orestes from Tegea.
Our enemies must never know where we have buried
them.
However how can we ever know who enemies are or when
and from where they will appear? Therefore, no grand
monuments, no flashy ornaments, those attract attention
and hatred.
Our dead need no such things, modest, content with little,
and now silent, indifferent to hydromels, votive offerings,
vain glory.
Better a bare stone and a small pot of geraniums, a secret
sign or even nothing. Certainly, we shall keep them within
us, if we can
and better still if we don’t know where they are buried.
The way things are in our days, who knows, we might
unearth them ourselves and one day we might discard
them.
Libros Libertad 