Death brings release from sorrow: the worst of torture is to be forced to live on in the midst of woe-- mors votum meum--cries Hecuba--(1171) infantibus violenta, virginibus venis, ubique properas, saeva: me solam times. O death, my sole desire, for boys and maids Thou com'st with hurried step and savage mien: But me alone of mortals dost thou fear. MILLER. So, too, Andromache, in the passage quoted above, almost apologizes for not having put an end to her existence. Polyxena meets death with exultation (_Tro_. 945, 1152-9): even the little Astyanax is infected with Stoic passion for suicide (1090): nec gradu segni puer ad alta pergit moenia. ut summa stetit pro turre, vultus huc et huc acres tulit intrepidus animo.... non flet e turba omnium qui fletur; ac, dum verba fatidici et preces concipit Vlixes vatis et saevos ciet ad sacra superos, sponte desiluit sua in media Priami regna. And with no lingering pace the boy climbed the lofty battlements, and all about him cast his keen gaze with dauntless soul.... But he alone of all the throng who wept for him wept not at all, and, while Ulysses 'uttered in priestly wise the words of fate and prayed' and called the cruel gods to the sacrifice, the boy of his own will cast himself down to death on the fields that Priam ruled. The enthusiasm for death is carried too far.[191] Even the agony of the _Troades_ fails really to stir us: it depresses us without wakening our sympathy. So, too, with other scenes: in the _Hercules Furens_ we have the virtuous Stoic--in the persons of Megara and Amphitryon--confronting the _instans tyrannus_ in the person of Lycus: it is the hackneyed theme of the schools of rhetoric,[192] but derives its inspiration from Stoicism (426):