Consolation to Apollonius (11-15)

And I believe Nature, knowing the confusion and shortness of our life, hath industriously concealed the end of it from us, this making for our advantage. For if we were sensible of it beforehand, some would pine away with untimely sorrow, and would die before their death came. For she saw the woes of this life, and with what a torrent of cares it is overflowed,—which if thou didst undertake to number, thou wouldst grow angry with it, and confirm that opinion which hath a vogue amongst some, that death is more desirable than life. Simonides hath glossed upon it after this manner:—

Our time is of a short and tender length,

Cares we have many, and but little strength;

Labors in crowds push one another on,

And cruel destiny we cannot shun.

The casting of these lots is very just,

For good and bad lie in one common dust.

Pindar hath it so:—

The Gods unequal have us mortals vexed,

For to one good, two evils are annexed:

They pay a single joy with double care,

And fools such dispensations cannot bear.[*]

Sophocles so:—

Why at a mortal’s death dost thou complain?

Thou know’st not what may be his future gain.

And Euripides so:—

Dost thou not know the state of human things?

A faithful monitor thy instruction brings.

Inevitable death hangs o’er our head,

And threatens falling by a doubtful thread.

There’s no man can be certain over night,

If he shall live to see to-morrow’s light.

Life without any interruption flows,

And the results of fate there’s no man knows.[*]

If then the condition of human life is such as they speak of, why do we not rather applaud their good fortunes who are feed from the drudgery of it, than pity and deplore them, as some men’s folly prompts them to do?

Socrates said that death was like either to a very deep sleep, or to a journey taken a great way and for a long time, or else to the utter extinction of soul and body; and if we examine each of these comparisons, he said, we shall find that death is not an evil upon any account. For if death is sleep, and no hurt happens to those who are in that innocent condition, it is manifest that neither are the dead ill dealt with. To what purpose should I talk of that which is so tritely known amongst all, that the most profound sleep is always the sweetest? Homer[*] particularly attests it:—

His senses all becalmed, he drew his breath,

His sleep was sound, and quiet like to death.

And in many places he saith thus,—

She met Death’s brother, Sleep.—

And again,—

Twin brothers, Sleep and Death,—

thereby representing the similitude (as it were) to the sight, for twins especially indicate similarity. And in another place he saith, Death is brazen sleep, thereby intimating to us that it is insensible. Neither hath he spoken much amiss who calls sleep the lesser mysteries of death; for sleep is really the first initiation into the mysteries of death.

Diogenes the Cynic, when a little before his death he fell into a slumber, and his physician rousing him out of it asked him whether any thing ailed him, wisely answered, Nothing, sir, only one brother anticipates another,—Sleep before Death.

If death be like a journey, neither upon this account is it an evil, but rather the contrary; for certainly it is the emphasis of happiness to be freed from the incumbrances of the flesh and all those troublesome passions which attend it, which serve only to darken the understanding, and overspread it with all the folly that is incident to human nature.

The very body, saith Plato, procures us infinite disquiet only to supply its daily necessities with food; but if any diseases are coincident, they hinder our contemplations, and stop us in our researches after truth. Besides, it distracts us with irregular desires, fears, and vain amours, setting before us so many fantastic images of things, that the common saying is here most true, that on account of the body we can never become wise. For wars, popular seditions, and shedding of blood by the sword are owing to no other original than this care of the body and gratifying its licentious appetites; for we fight only to get riches, and these

we acquire only to please the body; so that those who are thus employed have not leisure to be philosophers. And after all, when we have retrieved an interval of time to seek after truth, the body officiously interrupts us, is so troublesome and importune, that we can by no means discern its nature. Therefore it is evident that, if we will clearly know any thing, we must divest ourselves of the body, and behold things as they are in themselves with the mind itself, that at last we may attain what we so much desire, and what we do profess ourselves the most partial admirers of, which is wisdom. And this we cannot consummately enjoy till after death, as reason teacheth us. For if so be that we can understand nothing clearly as long as we are clogged with flesh, one of these things must needs be, either that we shall never arrive at that knowledge at all, or only when we die; for then the soul will exist by itself, separate from the body; and whilst we are in this life, we shall make the nearest advances towards it, if we have no more to do with the body than what decency and necessity require, if we break off all commerce with it, and keep ourselves pure from its contagion, till God shall give us a final release, and then being pure and freed from all its follies, we shall converse (it is likely) with intelligences as pure as ourselves, with our unaided vision beholding perfect purity,—and this is truth itself. For it is not fit that what is pure should be apprehended by what is impure. [*]

Therefore, if death only transports us to another place, it is not to be looked upon as an evil, but rather as an exceeding good, as Plato hath demonstrated. The words of Socrates to his judges seem to me to be spoken even with inspiration: To fear death, gentlemen, is nothing else than to counterfeit the being wise, when we are not so. For he that fears death pretends to know what he is ignorant

of; for no man is certain whether death be not the greatest good that can befall a man, but they positively dread it as if they were sure it was the greatest of evils. Agreeably to this said one after this manner:—

Let no man fear what doth his labors end;—

and death sets us free even from the greatest evils.

The Gods themselves bear witness to the truth of this, for many have obtained death as a gratuity from them. The less famous instances I will pass by, that I may not be prolix, and only mention those who are the most celebrated and in all men’s mouths. And in the first place, I will relate what befell Biton and Cleobis, two young men of Argos. They report that their mother being the priestess of Juno, and the time being come that she was to go up to the temple to perform the rites of the Goddess, and those whose office it was to draw her chariot tarrying longer than usual, these two young men harnessed themselves and took it up, and so carried their mother to the temple. She, being extremely taken with the piety of her sons, petitioned the Goddess that she would bestow upon them the best present that could be given to men; accordingly she cast them into that deep sleep out of which they never awoke, taking this way to recompense their ’filial zeal with death. Pindar writes of Agamedes and Trophonius, that after they had built a temple at Delphi, they requested of Apollo a reward for their work. It was answered them that they should have it within seven days, but in the mean while they were commanded to live freely and indulge their genius; accordingly they obeyed the dictate, and the seventh night they died in their beds. It is said also of Pindar, that when the deputies of the Boeotians were sent to consult the oracle, he desired them to enquire of it which was the best thing amongst men, and that the Priestess of the tripod gave them this answer,—that he

could not be ignorant of it, if he was the author of those writings concerning Agamedes and Trophonius; but if he desired personally to know, it should in a little time be made manifest to him; and that Pindar hearing this prepared himself for the stroke of Fate and died in a short time after. Of Euthynous the Italian there is this memorable story, that he died suddenly, without anybody’s knowing the cause of his death. His father was Elysius the Terinean, who was a man of the first condition for his estate and virtue, being rich and honorable, and this being his only son and heir to all his fortune, which was very great, he had a strong jealousy upon him that he was poisoned, and not knowing how he should come to the information of it, he went into the vault where they invoke the dead, and after having offered sacrifice, as it is enjoined by the law, he slept in the place; when all things were in a midnight silence, he had this vision. His father appeared to him, to whom after having related his lamentable misfortune, he earnestly desired the ghost that he would assist him in finding out the cause. He answered that he was come on purpose to do it. But first, saith he, receive from this one what he hath brought thee, and thereby thou wilt understand the reason of all thy sorrow. The person that the father meant was very like to Euthynous both for years and stature; and the question being put to him who he was, he answered, I am the genius of thy son; and at the same time he reached out a book to him, which he opened and found these verses written therein:—

’Tis ignorance makes wretched men to err;

Fate did to happiness thy son prefer.

By destined death Euthynous seized we see;

So ’twas the better both for him and thee.

These are the stories which the ancientstell us.

But lastly, if death be the entire dissipation of soul and body (which was the third part of Socrates’s comparison),

even then it cannot be an evil. For this would produce a privation of sense, and consequently a complete freedom from all solicitude and care; and if no good, so no evil would befall us. For good and evil alike must by nature inhere in that which has existence and essence; but to that which is nothing, and wholly abolished out of the nature of things, neither of the two can belong. Therefore, when men die, they return to the same condition they were in before they were born. For as, before we came into the world, we were neither sensible of good nor afflicted with evil, so it will be when we leave it; and as those things which preceded our birth did not concern us, so neither will those things which are subsequent to our death:—

The dead secure from sorrow safe do lie,

’Tis the same thing not to be born and die.[*]

For it is the same state of existence after death as it was before we were born. Unless perhaps you will make a difference between having no being at all and the utter extinction of it, after the same manner that you make a distinction between an house and a garment after they are ruined and worn out, and at the time before the one was built and the other made. And if in this case there is no difference, it is plain that there is none between the state before we were born and that after we are dead. It is elegantly said by Arcesilaus, that death, which is called an evil, hath this peculiarly distinct from all that are thought so, that when it is present it gives us no disturbance, but when remote and in expectation only, it is then that it afflicts us. And indeed many out of the poorness of their spirit, having entertained most injurious opinions of it, have died even to prevent death. Epicharmus hath said excellently to this purpose: It was united, it is now dissolved; it returns back whence it came,—earth to earth, the spirit to regions

above. What in all this is grievous Nothing at all. But that which Cresphontes in Euripides saith of Hercules,—

For if he dwells below, beneath the earth,

With those whose life is gone, his strength is nought,

I would have changed into these words,—

For if he dwells below, beneath the earth,

With those whose life is gone, his woes are o’er.

This Laconic too is very noble:— Others before and after us will be, Whose age we’re not permitted e’er to see. And again:—

These neither did live handsomely nor die,

Though both should have been done with decency.

But Euripides hath spoken incomparably well of those who labor under daily indispositions:—

I hate the man who studies to defeat

The power of death with artificial meat,

To baffle and prevent his fate does think,

And lengthens out his life with magic drink.

Whereas, when he a burden doth become,

Then he should die, because lie’s troublesome.

Old age in modesty should then give place,

And so make way unto a brisker race.

But Merope moved the passion of the theatre with these masculine expressions:—

My sons by death are ravished from my side,

And I’m a widow, who was once a bride.

I am not thus selected to be crossed,

Others their sons and husbands too have lost.[*]

And we may not incongruously add these:—

What is become of that magnificence?

Where is King Croesus with his opulence?

Or where is Xerxes with his mighty pride,

Who with a bridge did curb the raging tide?

Inhabitants of darkness they became,

And now are living only in their fame.

Their riches have perished with their bodies.