11. If then the soul has no sensation after death, and dissolution is the end of all rewards and punishments, one might rather say that the divinity deals kindly and indulgently with the wicked who are speedily chastised and die. For if we were to assert nothing more than that as long as they live and during the present existence no evil befalls the bad, but that when vice is exposed and is seen to be a fruitless and barren thing, that it brings nothing good or worth an effort, in spite of many severe agonies of mind—the recognition of these facts renders life an uneasy one. A case in point is the story told of Lysimachus that under stress of thirst he gave up his body and his dominions to the Getae, but that when he had got into their hands and received a draught he cried out, ‘Shame on my baseness for depriving myself of such a kingdom for so short-lived a pleasure.’ Yet it is exceedingly difficult to resist the needs of our physical nature; but when a man, either for the sake of money or from avidity for political honors or influence, commits a lawless and wicked act, and when, after the thirst and madness of his passion have been allayed, he finds, in the course of time, that the ignominy and the bitter sorrow for his crimes remain behind, and that villainy has been neither advantageous nor necessary nor profitable, must not the thought, so servile and mean, often occur to him, that for empty glory or fleeting enjoyment he has trampled under foot the dearest and highest rights of mankind, only to fill his life with shame and confusion. For as Simonides jestingly said, that he always found the chest he kept for money full and the one he kept for gratitude empty; so wicked men, when they examine their own evil hearts, discover that for the sake of a pleasure which directly proves to be an empty one, they find them void of hope but full of sorrows and pain, unpleasant memories, and anxiety for the future, but big with distrust of the present. Just as we hear Ino crying out in the theater when filled with regret for what she had done, ‘Dear women, how can I again dwell in the house of Athamas? Would that I had done none of the deeds I committed!’ So the soul of every villain ought to consider well and reflect how it may rid itself of the memory of its iniquities and exorcise a bad conscience, undergo a process of purification and live life over again. When the bad is deliberately preferred, it shows a lack of confidence and firmness and strength and stability—unless, forsooth, we admit that evil-doers are a class of sages. Wherever there exists an uncontrollable love of money and pleasure, and insatiable avarice coupled with malice or a bad character, there you will find also, if you look closely, latent superstitions and an aversion to labor and fear of death and sudden gusts of passion and an eagerness to be talked about joined to a penchant for boasting. Such men fear those who censure them