he was being taken away from good; yet
surely it would have turned out advantageous for him; nor should we
have had these mournful verses,

Lo! these all perish'd in one flaming pile;
The foe old Priam did of life beguile,
And with his blood, thy altar, Jove, defile.

As if anything better could have happened to him at that time than to
lose his life in that manner; but yet, if it had befallen him sooner,
it would have prevented all those consequences; but even as it was, it
released him from any further sense of them. The case of our friend
Pompey[21] was something better: once, when he had been very ill at
Naples, the Neapolitans, on his recovery, put crowns on their heads, as
did those of Puteoli; the people flocked from the country to
congratulate him--it is a Grecian custom, and a foolish one; still it
is a sign of good fortune. But the question is, had he died, would he
have been taken from good, or from evil? Certainly from evil. He would
not have been engaged in a war with his father-in-law;[22] he would not
have taken up arms before he was prepared; he would not have left his
own house, nor fled from Italy; he would not, after the loss of his
army, have fallen unarmed into the hands of slaves, and been put to
death by them; his children would not have been destroyed; nor would
his whole fortune have come into the possession of the conquerors. Did
not he, then, who, if he had died at that time, would have died in all
his glory, owe all the great and terrible misfortunes into which he
subsequently fell to the prolongation of his life at that time?

XXXVI. These calamities are avoided by death, for even though they
should never happen, there is a possibility that they may; but it never
occurs to a man that such a disaster may befall him himself. Every one
hopes to be as happy as Metellus: as if the number of the happy
exceeded that of the miserable; or as if there were any certainty in
human affairs; or, again, as if there were more rational foundation for
hope than fear. But should we grant them even this, that men are by
death deprived of good things; would it follow that the dead are
therefore in need of the good things of life, and are miserable on that
account? Certainly they must necessarily say so. Can he who does not
exist be in need of anything? To be in need of has a melancholy sound,
because it in effect amounts to this--he had, but he has not; he
regrets, he looks back upon, he wants. S