a dog's epitaph

On the ancient tombstone of a dog, in Greece:

Thou passest on the path, if happily thou dost mark this monument,
Laugh not, I pray thee,
Though it is a dog's grave, tears fell for me,
and the dust was heaped above me by a master's hand,
who likewise engraved these words upon my tomb.

-- from Mary Elizabeth Thurston, The Lost History of the Canine Race: Our 15,000-Year Love Affair with Dogs (Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel, 1996), p. 45.