some considerable
distance from the town, and the cattle that were to draw the chariot
had not arrived, those two young men whom I have just mentioned,
pulling off their garments, and anointing their bodies with oil,
harnessed themselves to the yoke. And in this manner the priestess was
conveyed to the temple; and when the chariot had arrived at the proper
place, she is said to have entreated the Goddess to bestow on them, as
a reward for their piety, the greatest gift that a God could confer on
man. And the young men, after having feasted with their mother, fell
asleep; and in the morning they were found dead. Trophonius and
Agamedes are said to have put up the same petition, for they, having
built a temple to Apollo at Delphi, offered supplications to the God,
and desired of him some extraordinary reward for their care and labor,
particularizing nothing, but asking for whatever was best for men.
Accordingly, Apollo signified to them that he would bestow it on them
in three days, and on the third day at daybreak they were found dead.
And so they say that this was a formal decision pronounced by that God
to whom the rest of the deities have assigned the province of divining
with an accuracy superior to that of all the rest.

XLVIII. There is also a story told of Silenus, who, when taken prisoner
by Midas, is said to have made him this present for his ransom--namely,
that he informed him[25] that never to have been born was by far the
greatest blessing that could happen to man; and that the next best
thing was to die very soon; which very opinion Euripides makes use of
in his Cresphontes, saying,

When man is born, 'tis fit, with solemn show,
We speak our sense of his approaching woe;
With other gestures and a different eye,
Proclaim our pleasure when he's bid to die.[26]

There is something like this in Crantor's Consolation; for he says that
Terinaesus of Elysia, when he was bitterly lamenting the loss of his
son, came to a place of divination to be informed why he was visited
with so great affliction, and received in his tablet these three
verses:

Thou fool, to murmur at Euthynous' death!
The blooming youth to fate resigns his breath:
The fate, whereon your happiness depends,
At once the parent and the son befriends.[27]

On these and similar authorities they affirm that the question has been
determined by the Gods. Nay, more; Alcidamas, an ancient rhetorician of
the very highe