ES FOLGEN GRABINSCHRIFTEN

C. 176–188 form a set of 13 epitaphs in elegiac couplets written for Fuchsmagen. None of them made it onto Fuchsmagen’s tomb stone, where one reads: "Fuchsmagonum vixisse iuvat, rectumque piumque / Quod coluit: Reliquum somnia vana putat. / Dicite, quod melius, qui vivitis. Hoc ego tantum / Cognovi, ut moriar, nescius ipse mei" (see Di Brazzano 2005, 482). However, the first half of this text is identical to C. 178, while the second half is similar to C. 177. In most epitaphs, the speaker is Fuchsmagen himself, but in C. 183–186, an unnamed speaker talks about him. All pieces comprise one or two elegiac couplets and vary some of the following motifs: self-knowledge or the lack of it; moral integrity; curiosity and its check by the dogmata of the Church; Fuchsmagen’s services for two emperors, Frederick III and Maximilian I; emptiness and vanity of human life; rest achieved only in death; fate of body and soul after death; the monument made of marble; address to posterity or to a passer-by.