Epitaph for a Roman Girl

May the earth be lightly on thee,
May your sleep be undisturbed.
May your spirit run free,
May you not be lost in the earth.

Publia our beloved little girl,
It’s hard to believe you’ve gone away.
Your loss has shattered our world,
May we be together again soon one day.

Quick story. While I was on holiday the other week I visited the Canterbury Roman museum and saw the tombstone in the picture above and read the details about it pictured below.

The phrase “May the earth be lightly on thee,” stuck in my mind and that afternoon the rest of the poem/epitaph came to me as I tried to imagine what might have been going through Publia’s parent’s heads, those thousand and so years ago.