Themistocles was quite as unwilling to die, although he assigned a better reason for his love of life. Finding his mental and physical powers beginning to decay, in such a manner as to indicate his approaching end, he grieved that he must now depart, when, as he said, he was only beginning to grow wise. As an instance of superstitious terror, Plutarch tells us that Amestis, the wife of the great Xerxes, buried twelve persons alive, offering them as a sacrifice to Pluto for the prolongation of her own days. Mecaenas, the great patron of learning, and favorite of Augustus, had such a horror of death, that he had often in his mouth, "all things are to be endured so long as life is continued." The Emperor Domitian, from innate timidity, caused the walls of the galleries wherein he took daily recreation to be garnished with the stone called phangites, the brightness of which reflected all that was passing behind him. Theophrastus, the philosopher, who lived to be one hundred and seven years of age, was so attached to life that he complained of the partiality of nature in granting longevity to the crow and the stag beyond that accorded to man. Plutarch, in his life of Pericles, names a skilful engineer called Artemon, who was withal so timorous that he was frightened at his own shadow, and seldom stirred out of his house for fear some accident should betide him. Two of his servants always held a brazen target over his head lest anything might fall upon it; and if necessity compelled him to go abroad, he never walked, but was carried in a litter which hung within an inch or two of the ground. We read, in a more recent author, of a certain Rhodius, who, being sentenced to perpetual imprisonment in a dungeon, by a tyrant, for indulging in unseasonable liberty of speech, was treated in all respects like a caged beast, with great torture and ignominy. His food was scanty and loathsome; his hands were amputated, his face gashed and disfigured with wounds. In this miserable plight, some of his friends suggested to him to put an end to his sufferings by voluntary starvation. "No," he replied; "while life remains all things are to be hoped for." He clung to mere existence when death would have been a relief. How are we to reconcile or account for these strange contradictions? The sum of all appears to be that human nature is a complex mystery, beyond the powers of man to fathom with the limited faculties attached to his transitory condition.