Poems by Palladas

Upon life's tempest-troubled seas afloat,
We strike worse rocks than shipwrecked sailors know; ...

All mortal men are doomed to pay Death's debt,
And no one knows if he will live tomorrow.
Lear...

Waking we burst, at each return of morn,
From death's dull fetters and again are born.
No lon...

Why toil in vain, O man, thy soul disquieting?
Fate's slave from birth thou art, without rele...

I was born weeping, having wept I die,
And all my life in many tears is passed.
O tearful rac...

Thou hast a score of parts no good,
But two divinely shown:
Thy Daphne a true piece of wood, ...

I swore ten thousand times
To make no more epigrams,
For I had brought on my head
The enmity ...

Naked to earth was I brought--
Naked to earth I descend.
Why should I labor for naught,
Seein...

Tell me whence comes it
That thou measurest the Universe
And the limits of the Earth,
Thou wh...

Breathing the thin breath through our nostrils, we
Live, and a little space the sunlight see-...

This life a theatre we well may call,
Where every actor must perform with art,
Or laught it t...

Life is a perilous voyage;
For often we are tempest-tossed in it
And are in a worse case than ...

Pity, says the Theban bard,
From my wishes I discard;
Envy, let me rather be,
Rather far,...

Every woman is a source of annoyance,
But she has two good seasons,
The one in her bridal cha...

Drink and be merry. What the morrow brings
No mortal knoweth: wherefore toil or run?
Spend whil...