13-14: ‘You never ceased to ... farewell.’ The final words spoken by a person were imbued with great importance and a dying relative could advise their loved ones about future actions. In this epigram, attributed to either Simonides or Simias, a little girl shares her final words with her mother: " 'These were the very last words that Gorgo spoke to her dear mother, in tears throwing her hands round her neck: ‘Stay here with father and mayest thou bear another daughter, more fortunate than I was, to tend thy grey old age.’" Greek Anthology VII 647. We can see how Andromache reproaches the dead Hector for having left her without any parting words: "You did not hold out your arms to me or tell me some last weighty word, which I could remember forever, all the nights and days when I weep for you." Iliad XXIV 740-1. Quintilian provides us with a bizarre and insipid enactment of his son’s final moments which surely stretches the nature of the panegyric too far: "What fortitude he showed during an illness of eight months till all his physicians marvelled at him! How he consoled me during his last moments. How even in the wanderings of his delirium did his thoughts recur to his lessons and his studies, even when his strength was now sinking and he was no longer ours to claim." The Training of an Orator VI 11. Statius recounts grimly Glaucias' final moments. Here also the child’s bravery strikes the most poignant chord: "Yet he, though the Fates press hard upon his frail life, beholds thee with his dying vision and murmurs thy name with faltering tongue: to thee he gasps out the last breath from his exhausted frame, thee alone he remembers, thy cry alone he hears, for thee his lips are moved and his last words spoken, as he bids thee not to mourn and consoles thy grief." Silvae II.i.151-155, cf. Pliny, Epistles V 16; Homer, Iliad XXIV 44-45.