The philosophy which alone professed itself
able to heal men's sorrows applauded the supposed courage of a voluntary
death, and it was of too abstract, too fantastic, and too purely
theoretical a character to furnish them with any real or lasting
consolations. No sentiment caused more surprise to the Roman world than
the famous one preserved in the fragment of Maecenas,--
"Debilem facito manu,
Debilem pede, coxa,
Tuber adstrue gibberum,
Lubricos quate dentes;
Vita dum superest bene est;
Hanc mihi vel acuta
Si sedeam cruce sustine;"
which may be paraphrased,--
"Numb my hands with palsy,
Rack my feet with gout,
Hunch my back and shoulder,
Let my teeth fall out;
Still, if _Life_ be granted,
I prefer the loss;
Save my life, and give me
Anguish on the cross."
Seneca, in his 101st Letter, calls this "a most disgraceful and most
contemptible wish;" but it may be paralleled out of Euripides, and still
more closely out of Homer. "Talk not," says the shade of Achilles to
Ulysses in the Odyssey,--
"'Talk not of reigning in this dolorous gloom,
Nor think vain lies,' he cried, 'can ease my doom.
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