Even here the pathos is the calm and reasoned pathos of hopelessness, the pathos of a Stoic who preaches endurance of evils against which his philosophy is not proof. Here, too, we find the Stoic attitude towards death. Death is the end of all; there is naught to dread; death puts an end to hope and fear: to die is to be as though we had never been (394):
post mortem nihil est, ipsaque mors nihil. velocis spatii meta novissima; spem ponant avidi, solliciti metum. tempus nos avidum devorat et chaos: mors individua est, noxia corpori nec parcens animae: Taenara et aspero regnum sub domino limen et obsidens custos non facili Cerberus ostio rumores vacui verbaque inania et par sollicito fabula somnio. quaeris quo iaceas post obitum loco? quo non nata iacent.
Since naught remains, and death is naught
But life's last goal, so swiftly sought:
Let those who cling to life abate
Their fond desires, and yield to fate;
Soon shall grim time and yawning night
In their vast depths engulf us quite;
Impartial death demands the whole—
The body slays nor spares the soul.
Dark Taenara and Pluto fell,
And Cerberus, grim guard of hell—
All these but empty rumours seem,
The pictures of a troubled dream.
Where then will the departed spirit dwell?
Let those who never came to being tell.
MILLER.
Death brings release from sorrow: the worst of torture is to be forced to live on in the midst of woe—
mors votum meum—cries Hecuba—(1171) infantibus violenta, virginibus venis, ubique properas, saeva: me solam times.
O death, my sole desire, for boys and maids
Thou com'st with hurried step and savage mien:
But me alone of mortals dost thou fear.
MILLER.
So, too, Andromache, in the passage quoted above, almost apologizes for not having put an end to her existence. Polyxena meets death with exultation (Tro. 945, 1152-9): even the little Astyanax is infected with Stoic passion for suicide (1090):
nec gradu segni puer ad alta pergit moenia. ut summa stetit pro turre, vultus huc et huc acres tulit intrepidus animo…. non flet e turba omnium qui fletur; ac, dum verba fatidici et preces concipit Vlixes vatis et saevos ciet ad sacra superos, sponte desiluit sua in media Priami regna.
And with no lingering pace the boy climbed the lofty battlements, and all about him cast his keen gaze with dauntless soul…. But he alone of all the throng who wept for him wept not at all, and, while Ulysses 'uttered in priestly wise the words of fate and prayed' and called the cruel gods to the sacrifice, the boy of his own will cast himself down to death on the fields that Priam ruled.
The enthusiasm for death is carried too far.[191] Even the agony of the Troades fails really to stir us: it depresses us without wakening our sympathy. So, too, with other scenes: in the Hercules Furens we have the virtuous Stoic—in the persons of Megara and Amphitryon—confronting the instans tyrannus in the person of Lycus: it is the hackneyed theme of the schools of rhetoric,[192] but derives its inspiration from Stoicism (426):