Nor will I leave it to rumor to tell you of my
death. I will come myself, and you shall see me die, and feast
your eyes on the spectacle. Yet, O ye gods, who look down on
mortal woes, observe my fate! I ask but this: let me be remembered
in coming ages, and add those years to my fame which you have reft
from my life. Thus he said, and, turning his pale face and weeping
eyes towards her mansion, he fastened a rope to the gatepost, on
which he had often hung garlands, and putting his head into the
noose, he murmured, 'This garland at least will please you, cruel
girl!' and falling hung suspended with his neck broken. As he fell
he struck against the gate, and the sound was as the sound of a
groan. The servants opened the door and found him dead, and with
exclamations of pity raised him and carried him home to his
mother, for his father was not living. She received the dead body
of her son, and folded the cold form to her bosom, while she
poured forth the sad words which bereaved mothers utter. The
mournful funeral passed through the town, and the pale corpse was
borne on a bier to the place of the funeral pile. By chance the
home of Anaxarete was on the street where the procession passed,
and the lamentations of the mourners met the ears of her whom the
avenging deity had already marked for punishment.
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