reater happiness can
possibly await you." The Greeks look on these as great things; perhaps
they think too highly of them, or, rather, they did so then. And so he
who said this to Diagoras, looking on it as something very glorious,
that three men out of one family should have been conquerors there,
thought it could answer no purpose to him to continue any longer in
life, where he could only be exposed to a reverse of fortune.

I might have given you a sufficient answer, as it seems to me, on this
point, in a few words, as you had allowed the dead were not exposed to
any positive evil; but I have spoken at greater length on the subject
for this reason, because this is our greatest consolation in the losing
and bewailing of our friends. For we ought to bear with moderation any
grief which arises from ourselves, or is endured on our own account,
lest we should seem to be too much influenced by self-love. But should
we suspect our departed friends to be under those evils, which they are
generally imagined to be, and to be sensible of them, then such a
suspicion would give us intolerable pain; and accordingly I wished, for
my own sake, to pluck up this opinion by the roots, and on that account
I have been perhaps somewhat more prolix than was necessary.

XLVII. _A._ More prolix than was necessary? Certainty not, in my
opinion. For I was induced, by the former part of your speech, to wish
to die; but, by the latter, sometimes not to be unwilling, and at
others to be wholly indifferent about it. But the effect of your whole
argument is, that I am convinced that death ought not to be classed
among the evils.

_M._ Do you, then, expect that I am to give you a regular peroration,
like the rhetoricians, or shall I forego that art?

_A._ I would not have you give over an art which you have set off to
such advantage; and you were in the right to do so, for, to speak the
truth, it also has set you off. But what is that peroration? For I
should be glad to hear it, whatever it is.

_M._ It is customary, in the schools, to produce the opinions of the
immortal Gods on death; nor are these opinions the fruits of the
imagination alone of the lecturers, but they have the authority of
Herodotus and many others. Cleobis and Biton are the first they
mention, sons of the Argive priestess; the story is a well-known one.
As it was necessary that she should be drawn in a chariot to a certain
annual sacrifice, which was solemnized at a temple