When the phantom never ceased to trouble him, he sailed, as it appears,
to Heracleia, where is the Place of Summons of Souls, and with soothing
rites and libations set himself to call up the soul of the girl; she
appeared to him and told him that he “will cease from his troubles when
he reaches Lacedaemon”; and, directly he got there, he died.[224]
XI. ‘Then, if nothing remains for the soul after death, but [Sidenote:
D] death is a limit beyond which is neither grace nor punishment, we
should rather say that bad men who are punished quickly, and who die
off, are used gently and indulgently by Heaven. For if it could be held
that there is no other evil for the bad while life and time last, yet
even so, when injustice is tried and proved an unfruitful, thankless
business, which yields no return for many and great struggles, the mere
sense of these upsets the soul. You will remember the story of
Lysimachus, how, under [Sidenote: E] great stress of thirst, he
surrendered himself and his power to the Getae, and, when now their
prisoner, said as he drank: “Wretch that I am, for so brief a pleasure
to have lost so great a kingdom!” And yet to resist the physical
compulsion of appetite is very hard. But when a man, by grasping at
money, or in envy of political reputation and power, or for the pleasure
of some union, has wrought a lawless dreadful deed, and afterwards, when
the thirst or frenzy of passion has left him, sees, as [Sidenote: F]
time goes on, the disgrace and terror of iniquity becoming permanent,
with nothing useful, or necessary, or delightful gained, then is it not
natural that he should often reckon up and feel how hollow is the glory,
how ignoble and thankless the pleasure, for which he has upset all that
is greatest and noblest in human codes of right, and filled his own life
with shame and confusion? Simonides[225] used to say in jest that he
found the chest of silver always full, but that of gratitude empty; and
so bad men, when they look into the wickedness within them, find that,
through the pleasure which has a short-lived return, it is [Sidenote:
556] left void of hope, but filled to the brim with fears and pains and
joyless memory, with suspicion of the future, and distrust of the
present. So Ino on the stage,[226] when she is repenting of what she has
done:
_Say, maidens, how may I start clear, and dwell
Here in the house of Athamas, as though
I had done nothing of the deeds I did?_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account