Dialogues of the Dead (29.2)

Of your royal position, you say, and your beauty, and the weight of your tomb?

Good heavens, yes.

But, my handsome Mausolus, the strength and the beauty you mention aren’t still with you here. If we chose a judge of beauty, I can’t see why your skull should be thought better than mine. Both of them are bald and bare, both of us show our teeth in the same way, and have lost our eyes, and have snub noses now. Perhaps your tomb and all that costly marble may give the people of Halicarnassus something to show off, and they can boast to strangers of the magnificent building they have, but I can’t see what good it is to you, my good fellow, unless you’re claiming that, with all that marble pressing down on you, you have a heavier burden to bear than any of us.