M. But what is there of evil in that opinion? For let the soul perish as the body: is there any pain, or indeed any feeling at all, in the body after death? No one, indeed, asserts that; though Epicurus charges Democritus with saying so; but the disciples of Democritus deny it. No sense, therefore, remains in the soul; for the soul is nowhere. Where, then, is the evil? for there is nothing but these two things. Is it because the mere separation of the soul and body cannot be effected without pain? But even should that be granted, how small a pain must that be! Yet I think that it is false, and that it is very often unaccompanied by any sensation at all, and sometimes even attended with pleasure; but certainly the whole must be very trifling, whatever it is, for it is instantaneous. What makes us uneasy, or rather gives us pain, is the leaving all the good things of life. But just consider if I might not more properly say, leaving the evils of life; only there is no reason for my now occupying myself in bewailing the life of man, and yet I might, with very good reason. But what occasion is there, when what I am laboring to prove is that no one is miserable after death, to make life more miserable by lamenting over it? I have done that in the book which I wrote, in order to comfort myself as well as I could. If, then, our inquiry is after truth, death withdraws us from evil, not from good. This subject is indeed so copiously handled by Hegesias, the Cyrenaic philosopher, that he is said to have been forbidden by Ptolemy from delivering his lectures in the schools, because some who heard him made away with themselves. There is, too, an epigram of Callimachus[1] on Cleombrotus of Ambracia, who, without any misfortune having befallen him, as he says, threw himself from a wall into the sea, after he had read a book of Plato's. The book I mentioned of that Hegesias is called Ἀποκαρτερῶν, or "A Man who
- ↑ The epigram is,
Εἴπας ᾙλιε, χαἲρε, Κλεὀμβροτος Ὤμβρακιὠτης
ήλατ ὰφ ύψηλον τειχεος εὶς Άἴδην,
άξιον ούδεν ίδων θανάτου κακόν, άλλα Πλάτωνος
έν το περί ψίχης γράμμ αναλεξάμενος.Which may be translated, perhaps,
Farewell. O sun, Cleombrotus exclaim'd,
Then plunged from off a height beneath the sea;
Stung by pain, of no disgrace ashamed,
But moved by Plato's high philosophy.
