The Grave of Pomponius

“But when you set sail again from there to make for Jerusalem, I lay on you a duty that belongs to our grief. If you ever come to the shore of famous Ptolemais, ask very carefully where our friend Pomponius is buried, and do not refuse to visit his remains in that foreign soil. Shed many tears there, as much from your own feelings as from our tender love; and though it is a poor gift, scatter the ground there with purple flowers and sweet-smelling grass. And you will say to him, not roughly and not harshly, but in the voice of one who shares his sorrow and not of one who reproaches him, that if only he had been willing to listen to you once, or to me always, and if he had called on Martin rather than that man whom I am unwilling to name, he would never have been so cruelly separated from me. Nor would he now lie under a heap of unknown dust, having met his death in the middle of the sea with the lot of a shipwrecked pirate and barely finding burial on a far-off shore. Let those who wanted to injure me while seeking to avenge him look on this as their own work; let them look on their own glory, and, being avenged, let them stop attacking me from now on.” [a]

When I had spoken these sad words in a very mournful voice, and our laments had drawn tears from all the others, we at last went our ways, full indeed of deep admiration for Martin, but full no less of sorrow at our own lamenting.