only to be miserable, you would not
except any one living, for all must die; but there should be an end of
misery in death. But seeing that the dead are miserable, we are born to
eternal misery, for they must of consequence be miserable who died a
hundred thousand years ago; or rather, all that have ever been born.

_A._ So, indeed, I think.

_M._ Tell me, I beseech you, are you afraid of the three-headed
Cerberus in the shades below, and the roaring waves of Cocytus, and the
passage over Acheron, and Tantalus expiring with thirst, while the
water touches his chin; and Sisyphus,

Who sweats with arduous toil in vain
The steepy summit of the mount to gain?

Perhaps, too, you dread the inexorable judges, Minos and Rhadamanthus;
before whom neither L. Crassus nor M. Antonius can defend you; and
where, since the cause lies before Grecian judges, you will not even be
able to employ Demosthenes; but you must plead for yourself before a
very great assembly. These things perhaps you dread, and therefore look
on death as an eternal evil.

VI. _A._ Do you take me to be so imbecile as to give credit to such
things?

_M._ What, do you not believe them?

_A._ Not in the least.

_M._ I am sorry to hear that.

_A._ Why, I beg?

_M._ Because I could have been very eloquent in speaking against them.

_A._ And who could not on such a subject? or what trouble is it to
refute these monstrous inventions of the poets and painters?[6]

_M._ And yet you have books of philosophers full of arguments against
these.

_A._ A great waste of time, truly! for who is so weak as to be
concerned about them?

_M._ If, then, there is no one miserable in the infernal regions, there
can be no one there at all.

_A._ I am altogether of that opinion.

_M._ Where, then, are those you call miserable? or what place do they
inhabit? For, if they exist at all, they must be somewhere.

_A._ I, indeed, am of opinion that they are nowhere.

_M._ Then they have no existence at all.

_A._ Even so, and yet they are miserable for this very reason, that
they have no existence.

_M._ I had rather now have you afraid of Cerberus than speak thus
inaccurately.

_A._ In what respect?

_M._ Because you admit him to exist whose existence you deny with the
same breath. Where now is your sagacity? When you say any one is
miserable, you say that he who does not exist, does exist.

_A._ I am not so absurd as to say that.

_M._ What is it tha