eable to any one to be tormented; they rather say that
it is cruel, or hard to bear, afflicting, unnatural, but still not an
evil: while this man who says that it is the only evil, and the very
worst of all evils, yet thinks that a wise man would pronounce it
sweet. I do not require of you to speak of pain in the same words which
Epicurus uses--a man, as you know, devoted to pleasure: he may make no
difference, if he pleases, between Phalaris's bull and his own bed; but
I cannot allow the wise man to be so indifferent about pain. If he
bears it with courage, it is sufficient: that he should rejoice in it,
I do not expect; for pain is, beyond all question, sharp, bitter,
against nature, hard to submit to and to bear. Observe Philoctetes: We
may allow him to lament, for he saw Hercules himself groaning loudly
through extremity of pain on Mount Oeta. The arrows with which Hercules
presented him were then no consolation to him, when

The viper's bite, impregnating his veins
With poison, rack'd him with its bitter pains.

And therefore he cries out, desiring help, and wishing to die,

Oh that some friendly hand its aid would lend,
My body from this rock's vast height to send
Into the briny deep! I'm all on fire,
And by this fatal wound must soon expire.

It is hard to say that the man who was obliged to cry out in this
manner was not oppressed with evil, and great evil too.

VIII. But let us observe Hercules himself, who was subdued by pain at
the very time when he was on the point of attaining immortality by
death. What words does Sophocles here put in his mouth, in his
Trachiniae? who, when Deianira had put upon him a tunic dyed in the
centaur's blood, and it stuck to his entrails, says,

What tortures I endure no words can tell,
Far greater these, than those which erst befell
From the dire terror of thy consort, Jove--
E'en stern Eurystheus' dire command above;
This of thy daughter, Oeneus, is the fruit,
Beguiling me with her envenom'd suit,
Whose close embrace doth on my entrails prey,
Consuming life; my lungs forbid to play;
The blood forsakes my veins; my manly heart
Forgets to beat; enervated, each part
Neglects its office, while my fatal doom
Proceeds ignobly from the weaver's loom.
The hand of foe ne'er hurt me, nor the fierce
Giant issuing from his parent earth.
Ne'er could the Centaur such a blow enforce,
No barbaro