Epitaph of Gnaeus Naevius (From Latin)

Epitaph of Naevius
Translated by A.Z. Foreman

Were mourning mortals right for immortals
The godly Muses would mourn their Naevius.
For once he was stowed in the Deathlord's storehouse
Rome's tongue lost its Latin language.

The Original:

Naevius' epitaph in his own time might have looked something like this if inscribed somewhere in the orthography of the 3rd century BC

IMORTALES·MORTALES·SEI·FORET·FAS·FLERE
FLERENT·DEIVAI·CAMENAI·NAIVIOM·POETAM
ITAQVE·POSTQUAM·EST·ORCI·TRADITUS·TESAVROD
OBLITEI·SONT·ROMANEI·LOQVIER·LINGVAD·LATINAD

Here's a possible and highly speculative idea of how it might have been pronounced:


Here's how it occurred in Aulus Gellius with spelling regularized in accordance with modern editorial practice:

Inmortales mortales si foret fas flere,
flerent diuae Camenae Naeuium poetam.
itaque postquam est Orchi traditus thesauro,
obliti sunt Romani loquier lingua Latina.

Here's a possibility for how that might have sounded: