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 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 labour, 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(74) 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 sen