Thus will I work out my allotted span, content with the appointments of Fate, my spirit free from care." Besides contributing a large amount of beautiful poetry, this author provided his own funeral oration, the earliest which has come down to us, written just before his death in A.D.427.

Funeral orations are not only pronounced by some friend at the grave, but are further solemnly consumed by fire, in the belief that they will thus reach the world of spirits, and be a joy and an honour to the deceased, in the same sense that paper houses, horses, sedan-chairs, and similar articles, are burnt for the use of the dead..