Consolatio ad Apollonium

True, it may be said, but an untimely death moves most people to mourning and lamentation. Yet, even for this, words of consolation are so readily found that they have been perceived by even uninspired poets, and comfort has been had from them. Observe what one of the comic poets [*](Cf. Kock, Com. Att. Frag. iii. p. 429, Adespota, No. 116.) says on this subject to a man who is grieving for an untimely death:

Then if you knew that, had he lived this life, Which he did not live, Fate had favoured him, His death was not well timed; but if again This life had brought some ill incurable, Then Death perhaps were kindlier than you.

Since, then, it is uncertain whether or not it was profitable for him that he rested from his labours, forsaking this life and released from greater ills, we ought not to bear it so grievously as though we had lost all that we thought we should gain from him. Not ill considered, evidently, is the comfort which Amphiaraus in the poem offers to the mother of Archemorus, who is greatly affected because her son came to his end in his infancy long before his time. For he says:

There is no man that does not suffer ill; Man buries children, and begets yet more,

And dies himself. Men are distressed at this, Committing earth to earth. But Fate decrees That life be garnered like the ripened grain, That one shall live and one shall pass from life. What need to grieve at this, which Nature says Must be the constant cycle of all life ? In what must be there’s naught that man need dread.[*](From the Hypsipyle of Euripides; cf. Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag., Euripides, No. 757.)

In general everyone ought to hold the conviction, if he seriously reviews the facts both by himself and in the company of another, that not the longest life is the best, but the most efficient. For it is not the man who has played the lyre the most, or made the most speeches, or piloted the most ships, who is commended, but he who has done these things excellently. Excellence is not to be ascribed to length of time, but to worth and timely fitness. For these have come to be regarded as tokens of good fortune and of divine favour. It is for this reason, at any rate, that the poets have traditionally represented those of the heroes who were preeminent and sprung from the gods as quitting this life before old age, like him Who to the heart of great Zeus and Apollo was held to be dearest, Loved with exceeding great love; but of eld he reached not the threshold.[*](Homer, Od. xv. 245.) For we everywhere observe that it is a happy use of opportunity, rather than a happy old age, that wins the highest place.[*](Cf. Marcus Antoninus, 24. 1, and Seneca, Epist. 93. 2.) For of trees and plants the best are those that in a brief time produce the most crops of fruit, and the best of animals are those from which in no long time we have the greatest service toward our livelihood. The terms long and short obviously appear to lose their difference if we fix

our gaze on eternity. For a thousand or ten thousand years, according to Simonides, are but a vague second of time, or rather the smallest fraction of a second. Take the case of those creatures which they relate exist on the shores of the Black Sea,[*](Aristotle, Hist. animal. v. 19. 3f. (copied by Pliny, Natural History, xi. 36 (43)). Cf. Aelian, De nat. animal. v. 43; Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, i. 39 (94).) and have an existence of only one day, being born in the morning, reaching the prime of life at mid-day, and toward evening growing old and ending their existence; would there not be in those creatures this same feeling which prevails with us, if each of them had within him a human soul and power to reason, and would not the same relative conditions obviously obtain there, so that those who departed this life before mid-day would cause lamentation and tears, while those who lived through the day would be accounted altogether happy ? The measure of life is its excellence, not its length in years.