l must [3896]die.

[3897] "Constat aeterna positumque lege est,
Ut constet genitum nihil."

It cannot be revoked, we are all mortal, and these all commanding gods and
princes "die like men:"[3898]--_involvit humile pariter et celsum caput,
aquatque summis infima_. "O weak condition of human estate," Sylvius
exclaims: [3899]Ladislaus, king of Bohemia, eighteen years of age, in the
flower of his youth, so potent, rich, fortunate and happy, in the midst of
all his friends, amongst so many [3900]physicians, now ready to be [3901]
married, in thirty-six hours sickened and died. We must so be gone sooner
or later all, and as Calliopeius in the comedy took his leave of his
spectators and auditors, _Vos valete et plaudite, Calliopeius recensui_,
must we bid the world farewell (_Exit Calliopeius_), and having now played
our parts, for ever be gone. Tombs and monuments have the like fate, _data
sunt ipsis quoque fata sepulchris_, kingdoms, provinces, towns, and cities
have their periods, and are consumed. In those flourishing times of Troy,
Mycenae was the fairest city in Greece, _Graeciae cunctae imperitabat_, but
it, alas, and that [3902]"Assyrian Nineveh are quite overthrown:" the like
fate hath that Egyptian and Boeotian Thebes, Delos, _commune Graeciae,
conciliabulum_, the common council-house of Greece, [3903]and Babylon, the
greatest city that ever the sun shone on, hath now nothing but walls and
rubbish left. [3904]_Quid Pandioniae restat nisi nomen Athenae_? Thus
[3905]Pausanias complained in his times. And where is Troy itself now,
Persepolis, Carthage, Cizicum, Sparta, Argos, and all those Grecian cities?
Syracuse and Agrigentum, the fairest towns in Sicily, which had sometimes
700,000 inhabitants, are now decayed: the names of Hieron, Empedocles, &c.,
of those mighty numbers of people, only left. One Anacharsis is remembered
amongst the Scythians; the world itself must have an end; and every part of
it. _Caeterae igitur urbes sunt mortales_, as Peter [3906]Gillius concludes
of Constantinople, _haec sane quamdiu erunt homines, futura mihi videtur
immortalis_; but 'tis not so: nor site, nor strength, nor sea nor land, can
vindicate a city, but it and all must vanish at last. And as to a traveller
great mountains seem plains afar off, at last are not discerned at all;
cities, men, monuments decay,--_nec solidis prodest sua machina terris_,
[3907]the names are only left, those at length forgotten, and are involved