I imagine also that it was because Nature saw the indefiniteness and the
brevity of life that she caused the time allowed us before death to be kept
from us. And it is better so; for if we knew this beforehand, some persons
would be utterly wasted by griefs before their time, and would be dead long
before they died. Observe too the painfulness of life, and the exhaustion
caused by many cares ; if we should wish to enumerate all these, we should
too readily condemn life, and we should confirm the opinion which now
prevails in the minds of some that it is better to be dead than to live.
Simonides
1 at any rate says :
Petty indeed is men's strength ; All their strivings are vain ; Toil
upon toil in a life of no length. [p. 137] Death hovers over
them all, Death which is foreordained. Equal the share by the brave is
attained In death with the base.
And Pindar
2 says :
A pair of
miseries with each good The deathless gods mete out to mortal man. The
foolish cannot bear them as they should.
And Sophocles
3 says :
Mourn you a mortal if he's passed away, Not knowing if
the future brings him gain ?
And Euripides
4 says :
Know you the nature of this mortal world ? I wot not.
For whence could you ? But hear me. By all mankind is owed a debt to
death, And not a single man can be assured If he shall live throughout
the coming day. For Fortune's movements are inscrutable.
Since,
then, the life of men is such as these poets say it is, surely it is more
fitting to felicitate those who have been released from their servitude in
it than to pity them and bewail them, as the majority do through ignorance.
