‘True,’ it may be said, ‘but an untimely death moves
most people to mourning and lamentation.’ Yet, even for this,
words of consolation are so readily found that they have been perceived by
even uninspired poets, and comfort has been had from them. Observe what one
of the comic poets
1 says on this subject to a man who is grieving for an
untimely death :
Then if you knew that, had he
lived this life, Which he did not live, Fate had favoured him, His death
was not well timed ; but if again This life had brought some ill
incurable, Then Death perhaps were kindlier than you.
Since,
then, it is uncertain whether or not it was profitable for him that he
rested from his labours, forsaking this life and released from greater ills,
we ought not to bear it so grievously as though we had lost all that we
thought we should gain from him. Not ill considered, evidently, is the
comfort which Amphiaraus in the poem offers to the mother of Archemorus, who
is greatly affected because her son came to his end in his infancy long
before his time. For he says :
There is no man that
does not suffer ill; Man buries children, and begets yet more, [p. 157] And dies himself. Men are distressed at this,
Committing earth to earth. But Fate decrees That life be garnered like
the ripened grain, That one shall live and one shall pass from life.
What need to grieve at this, which Nature says Must be the constant
cycle of all life ? In what must be there's naught that man need
dread.2
