3
Nor is there lack of humour in what the comic poet Probably some poet of the new Comedy; cf. Kock, Com. Att. Frag. iii. p. 438. has somewhere said with reference to those who cover their bedsteads with gold and silver: The one free gift the gods bestow on us. Our sleep, why make its cost to you so much? But to the superstitious man it is possible to say, The gift of sleep which the gods bestow on us as a time of forgetfulness and respite from our ills; why do you make this an everlastingly painful torturechamber for yourself, since your unhappy soul cannot run away to some other sleep? Heracleitus Diels, Fragmenta der Vorsokratiker, i. p. 95. says that people awake enjoy one world in common, but of those who are fallen asleep each roams about in a world of his own. But the superstitious man enjoys no world in common with the rest of mankind; for neither when awake does he use his intelligence, nor when fallen asleep is he freed from his agitation, but his reasoning power is sunk in dreams, his fear is ever wakeful, and there is no way of escape or removal.
