e dead may
be annihilated, and have no sensation of any thing whatever; or, as it
is said, there are a certain change and passage of the soul from one
place to another. And if it is a privation of all sensation, as it were
a sleep in which the sleeper has no dream, death would be a wonderful
gain. For I think that if any one, having selected a night in which he
slept so soundly as not to have had a dream, and having compared this
night with all the other nights and days of his life, should be
required, on consideration, to say how many days and nights he had
passed better and more pleasantly than this night throughout his life, I
think that not only a private person, but even the great king himself,
would find them easy to number, in comparison with other days and
nights. If, therefore, death is a thing of this kind, I say it is a
gain; for thus all futurity appears to be nothing more than one night.
But if, on the other hand, death is a removal from hence to another
place, and what is said be true, that all the dead are there, what
greater blessing can there be than this, my judges? For if, on arriving
at Hades, released from these who pretend to be judges, one shall find
those who are true judges, and who are said to judge there, Minos and
Rhadamanthus, AEacus and Triptolemus, and such others of the demi-gods as
were just during their own life, would this be a sad removal? At what
price would you not estimate a conference with Orpheus and Musaeus,
Hesiod and Homer? I indeed should be willing to die often, if this be
true. For to me the sojourn there would be admirable, when I should meet
with Palamedes, and Ajax, son of Telamon, and any other of the ancients
who has died by an unjust sentence. The comparing my sufferings with
theirs would, I think, be no unpleasing occupation. But the greatest
pleasure would be to spend my time in questioning and examining the
people there as I have done those here, and discovering who among them
is wise, and who fancies himself to be so, but is not. At what price, my
judges, would not any one estimate the opportunity of questioning him
who led that mighty army against Troy, or Ulysses, or Sisyphus, or ten
thousand others whom one might mention both men and women--with whom to
converse and associate, and to question them, would be an inconceivable
happiness? Surely for that the judges there do not condemn to death; for
in other respects those who live there are more happy than those who