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Socrates Plato, Apology, p. 40 C. said that death resembles either a very deep sleep or a long and distant journey, or, thirdly, a sort of destruction and extinction of both the body and the soul, but that by no one of these possibilities is it an evil. Each of these conceptions he pursued further, and the first one first. For if death is a sleep, and there is nothing evil in the state of those who sleep, it is evident that there is likewise nothing evil in the state of those who are dead. Nay, what need is there even to state that the deepest sleep is indeed the sweetest ? For the fact is of itself patent to all men, and Homer Od. xiii. 80. bears witness by saying regarding it: Slumber the deepest and sweetest, and nearest to death in its semblance. In another place Il. xiv. 231. also he says: Here she chanced to encounter the brother of Death, which is Slumber, and Slumber and Death, the twin brothers, Il. xvi. 672, 682. thereby indicating their similarity in appearance, for twins show most similarity. And again somewhere Il. xi. 241. he says that death is a brazen sleep, in allusion to our insensibility in it. And not inelegantly did the man Mnesimachus. Cf. Kock, Com. Att. Frag. ii. p. 422, Mnesimachus, No. 11. Initiation into the lesser mysteries (celebrated at Agrae, near Athens, in March) was required before one could be admitted to the great Eleusinian festival in September. seem to put the case who called sleep the Lesser Mysteries of death; for sleep is really a preparatory rite for death. Very wise was the remark of the cynic Diogenes, who, when he had sunk into slumber and was about to depart this life, was roused by his physician, who inquired if anything distressed him. Nothing, he said, for the one brother merely forestalls the other. Cf. a similar remark attributed to Gorgias of Leontini in Aelian, Varia Historia, ii. 35.
