hink ourselves deprived of some great advantages, and
seem disappointed and forlorn. But if, through life, we are in continual
suspense, still expecting, still desiring, and are in continual pain and
torture, good Gods! how pleasant must that journey be which ends in
security and ease! How pleased am I with Theramenes! of how exalted a soul
does he appear! For, although we never read of him without tears, yet that
illustrious man is not to be lamented in his death, who, when he had been
imprisoned by the command of the thirty tyrants, drank off, at one
draught, as if he had been thirsty, the poisoned cup, and threw the
remainder out of it with such force, that it sounded as it fell; and then,
on hearing the sound of the drops, he said, with a smile, "I drink this to
the most excellent Critias," who had been his most bitter enemy; for it is
customary among the Greeks, at their banquets, to name the person to whom
they intend to deliver the cup. This celebrated man was pleasant to the
last, even when he had received the poison into his bowels, and truly
foretold the death of that man whom he named when he drank the poison, and
that death soon followed. Who that thinks death an evil, could approve of
the evenness of temper in this great man at the instant of dying? Socrates
came, a few years after, to the same prison and the same cup, by as great
iniquity on the part of his judges as the tyrants displayed when they
executed Theramenes. What a speech is that which Plato makes him deliver
before his judges, after they had condemned him to death!

XLI. "I am not without hopes, O judges, that it is a favourable
circumstance for me that I am condemned to die; for one of these two
things must necessarily happen, either that death will deprive me entirely
of all sense, or else, that by dying I shall go from hence into some other
place; wherefore, if all sense is utterly extinguished, and if death is
like that sleep which sometimes is so undisturbed as to be even without
the visions of dreams--in that case, O ye good Gods! what gain is it to
die! or what length of days can be imagined which would be preferable to
such a night? And if the constant course of future time is to resemble
that night, who is happier than I am? But if, on the other hand, what is
said be true, namely, that death is but a removal to those regions where
the souls of the departed dwell, then that state must be more happy still,
to have escaped from those who ca