In death there dwells the end of human strife;
For what mid men than death is mightier?
Who can inflict pain on the stony scaur
By wounding it with spear-point? Who can hurt
The dead, when dead men have no sense of suffering?
Antigone, 160.
Think'st thou that Death will heed thy tears at all,
Or send thy son back if thou wilt but groan?
Nay, cease; and, gazing at thy neighbor's grief,
Grow calm: if thou wilt take the pains to reckon
How many have toiled out their lives in bonds,
How many wear to old age, robbed of children,
And all who from the tyrant's height of glory
Have sunk to nothing. These things shouldst thou heed.
Dictys, 334.
No man was ever born who did not suffer.
He buries children, then begets new sons,
Then dies himself: and men forsooth are grieved,
Consigning dust to dust. Yet needs must be
Lives should be garnered like ripe harvest-sheaves,
And one man live, another perish. Why
Mourn over that which nature puts upon us?
Naught that must be is terrible to mortals.
Hypsipyle, 752.
Think you that sins leap up to heaven aloft
On wings, and then that on Jove's red-leaved tablets
Some one doth write them, and Jove looks at them
In judging mortals? Not the whole broad heaven,
If Jove should write our sins, would be enough,
Nor he suffice to punish them. But Justice
Is here, is somewhere near us; do but look.