Simonides

Simonides of Keos (Ceos); (456?-468 BCE) The Greek poet who immortalized himself by writing a short poem to the fallen Spartan soldiers after the battle of Thermopylae.

There are numerous versions of his tribute to the seer Megistias which was written on the wall at Thermopylae and all of them are a tribute to the timeless potential of poetry to convey, with few words, what history must take volumes to relate.

I will not provide a translation of this epigram because of copyright problems; but as an exercise in learning the difficulties in translating Greek into English, I suggest that you look at as many translations of Histories by Herodotus (book 7, chapter 228) as you can find and observe the many and varied ways different translators render the epigram; this will give you an idea of the way the Greek language has been used and abused over the centuries.