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Indeed, you cannot find words to tell how ridiculous it is, Charon, especially their inordinate ambition and the way in which they disappear from the scene in the midst of their hopes, carried off by our good friend Death. His messengers and servants are very many, as you see—chills, fevers, wasting sicknesses, inflammations of the lungs, swords, pirate vessels, bowls of hemlock, judges, and tyrants; and no thought of any of these occurs to them while they are prosperous, but when the come to grief, many are the cries of “Oh!” and “Ah!” and “O dear me!” If they had realized at the very beginning that they were mortal, and that after this brief sojourn in the world they would go away as from a dream, taking leave of everything above ground, they would live more sanely and would be less unhappy after death.Most of the dead are unhappy, as Hermes and Charon well know. See the Downward Journey, and even Homer’s Achilles (Odyssey 11, 488). But as it is, they have imagined that what they have now will be theirs forever, and so, when the servant, standing at their bedside, summons them and hales them off in the bonds of fever or consumption, they make a great to-do about it, for they never expected to be torn away from their gear. For example, that man who is busily building himself a house and driving the workmen on; w hat would not he do if he knew that although the house will be finished, as soon as he gets the roof on, he himself will depart and leave his heir the enjoyment of it without even dining in it, poor fellow? And as for the man over there, who rejoices because his wife has borne him a son and entertains his friends in honour of the occasion and gives the boy his father’s name, if he knew that the boy willdie atthe age of seven, do you think he would rejoice over his birth? No, it is because he sees yonder man who is fortunate in his son, the father of the athlete who has been victor at the Olympic games, but does not see his next door neighbour, who is burying his son, and does not know what manner of thread his own son has been attached to. Again, take those who quarrel about boundaries—you see how numerous they are; likewise those who heap up money and then, before enjoying it, receive a summons from the messengers and servants that I mentioned.
