Socrates
1 said
that death resembles either a very deep sleep or a long and distant journey,
or, thirdly, a sort of destruction and extinction of both the body and the
soul, but that by no one of these possibilities is it an evil. Each of these
conceptions he pursued further, and the first one first. For if
[p. 139] death is a sleep, and there is nothing evil in the
state of those who sleep, it is evident that there is likewise nothing evil
in the state of those who are dead. Nay, what need is there even to state
that the deepest sleep is indeed the sweetest ? For the fact is of itself
patent to all men, and Homer
2 bears witness by saying regarding it:
Slumber the deepest and sweetest, and nearest to death
in its semblance.
In another place
3 also he says :
Here she chanced to encounter the brother of Death, which is
Slumber,
and
Slumber and Death, the
twin brothers,4
thereby indicating their similarity in appearance,
for twins show most similarity. And again somewhere
5 he says that death is a ‘brazen
sleep,’ in allusion to our insensibility in it. And not
inelegantly did the man
6 seem to put the case who called
‘sleep the Lesser Mysteries of death’; for sleep is really
a preparatory rite for death. Very wise was the remark of the cynic
Diogenes, who, when he had sunk into slumber and was about to depart this
life, was roused by his physician, who inquired if anything distressed him.
‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘for the one brother merely
forestalls the other.’
7
