Laudator Temporis Acti

Inscription from Antinooupolis (3rd century AD), in Werner Peek, Griechische Vers-Inschriften, Vol. I: Grab-Epigramme (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1955), pp. 341-342 (number 1167), and Étienne Bernand, Inscriptions métriques de l'Égypte gréco-romaine (Besançon: Université de Franche-Comté, 1969), pp. 143-147 (number 26, my translation):

If you know a man by the name of Pallas,
commander of ten men, in charge of (public) works of Antinoë,
to him a god led me, as a servant,
from the land of Ethiopia, where my ancestors are.
As for skin color, among the living, I was quite black,        5
the sort of one whom the sun's shafts make;
But my soul, always swelling with white flowers,
attracted the good will of a wise master,
for beauty ranks second to a good soul,
and crowned well my black form.        10
As the frenzied god (i.e. Dionysus) went among the Indians
to send forth dread tribes of barbarians to his altars,
such I was before, burned by the sun.
But now on the other hand in the grave I have hidden everything,
the soul and the body that surrounded me before,        15
and, of all that, there remains to me only a name.
For you may know, o stranger, that I am Epitynchanon,
having chanced upon all things pleasant to mortals;
May god give my master in recompense for these things
both a long road and at the same time fair fame.        20

Πάλλαντος εἴ τιν' οἶσθας ἄνδρ’ ἐπώνυμον,
δεκάδαρχον, ἔργων Ἀντινόοιο προστάτην,
τούτῳ με δαίμων οἰκέτην κατήγαγεν
Αἰθιοπίδος γῆς, ἔνθ' ἐμοὶ φυτόσποροι.
χροιήν μὲν ἐν ζωοῖσιν ἦν μελάντερος,        5
οἷον βολαὶ ποιοῦσιν ἡλιωτίδες·
ψυχὴ δὲ λευκοῖς ἄνθεσιν βρύουσ' ἀεὶ
εὔνοιαν εἷλκε δεσπότου σαόφρονος,
ψυχῆς γὰρ ἐσθλῆς κάλλος ἐστὶ δεύτερον,
μορφήν τέ μοι μέλαιναν εὖ κατέστεφεν       . 10
οἷος μετ' Ἰνδοὺς ἦλθε μαινόλης θεός,
βωμοῖς ἀνήσων αἰνὰ φῦλα βαρβάρων,
τοιοῦτος ἦν πάροιθεν ἡλιούμενος.
νῦν αὖτε τύμβῳ πάντ' ἀποκρύψας ἔχω,
θυμόν τε μορφήν θ' ἥ με τὸ πρὶν ἄμπεχεν,        15
λοιπὸν δὲ πάντων οὔνομ' ἐστί μοι μόνον.
Ἐπιτυγχάνοντα γάρ με γινώσκοις, ξένε,
πάντων τυχόντα τῶν βροτοῖσιν ἡδέων·
τούτων δ' ἀμοιβὴν δεσπότῃ δοίη θεὸς
βίου τε μακρεὶν οἶμον εὔκλειάν θ' ὁμοῦ.        20

On line 7, cf. Homer, Iliad 17.56 (βρύει ἄνθεϊ λευκῷ).

The inscription was discovered and first published by Carl Schmidt, "Eine griechische Grabinschrift aus Antinoë," in Aegyptiaca: Festschrift für Georg Ebers (Leipzig: Verlag von Wilhelm Engelmann, 1897), pp. 99-106. I learned about it from J.P.V.D. Balsdon, Romans and Aliens (London: Duckworth, 1979), p. 219, with n. 38 on p. 294, and was surprised to find no complete English translation. See Frank M. Snowden Jr., "Some Greek and Roman Observations on the Ethiopian," Traditio 16 (1960) 19-38 (at 30), who compares Menander, fragment 612 Koerte (835 Kassel and Austin), lines 11-12 (tr. Francis G. Allinson):

The man whose natural bent is good,
He, mother, he, though Aethiop, is nobly born.

ὅς ἂν εὖ γεγονὼς ᾖ τῇ φύσει πρὸς τἀγαθά,
κἂν Αἰθίοψ ᾖ, μῆτερ, ἐστὶν εὐγενής.

As Bernand says (p. 147), "L'épitaphe est écrite tout autant à la gloire du maître ... qu'en souvenir de l'esclave," i.e., "the epitaph was composed as much to glorify the master as to remember the slave."