Prayer to Persephone

A modern LABRYS text (see greek-agathodaimon-001) — the farewell at a burial.

Here, more clearly than anywhere else in this set, one sees what happens to every reconstruction: the language spoken round about shows through it.

The closing line — "may your memory be eternal" — coincides with the acclamation of the Orthodox funeral service, "Eternal memory", aiōnia hē mnēmē, which every Greek knows. The coincidence may be unintended; there is nothing on which to assert the composer's purpose. But the phrase stands in the text, and it is not ancient.

An ancient farewell is built differently. It says "rejoice" and asks the earth not to press down (terra-funerary-001), or admits that it does not know whether the dead hear anything at all (terra-funerary-002). It promises no eternal memory: that would not be in anyone's gift.

The same thing is visible in the prayer to the ancestors from the same book, where the dead are called founding fathers and adduced as a moral example (greek-ancestors-001).

This must be noted without mockery. No one can write a prayer in a language that does not exist; a composer takes his words from where he has them. The card's business is to say from where.