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I imagine also that it was because Nature saw the indefiniteness and the brevity of life that she caused the time allowed us before death to be kept from us. And it is better so; for if we knew this beforehand, some persons would be utterly wasted by griefs before their time, and would be dead long before they died. Observe too the painfulness of life, and the exhaustion caused by many cares; if we should wish to enumerate all these, we should too readily condemn life, and we should confirm the opinion which now prevails in the minds of some that it is better to be dead than to live. Simonides Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec. iii., Simonides, No. 39. at any rate says: Petty indeed is men’s strength; All their strivings are vain; Toil upon toil in a life of no length. Death hovers over them all, Death which is foreordained. Equal the share by the brave is attained In death with the base. And Pindar Pyth.iii. 82; Cf. Homer, Il. xxiv. 527, quoted supra 105 C. says: A pair of miseries with each good The deathless gods mete out to mortal man. The foolish cannot bear them as they should. And Sophocles From an unknown play; Cf. Nauck, T.G.F., Sophocles, No. 761. says: Mourn you a mortal if he’s passed away, Not knowing if the future brings him gain ? And Euripides Alcestis, 780. says: Know you the nature of this mortal world ? I wot not. For whence could you ? But hear me. By all mankind is owed a debt to death, And not a single man can be assured If he shall live throughout the coming day. For Fortune’s movements are inscrutable. Since, then, the life of men is such as these poets say it is, surely it is more fitting to felicitate those who have been released from their servitude in it than to pity them and bewail them, as the majority do through ignorance.
