Juvenal, Sat. x. 356.
Marcus Aurelius recommends prayer, but only that we may be freed from evil desires. (ix. 11.)
Philost. Apoll. of Tyan. v. 4. Hence their passion for suicide, which Silius Italicus commemorates in lines which I think very beautiful:—
“Prodiga gens animæ et properare facillima mortem;
Namque ubi transcendit florentes viribus annos
Impatiens ævi, spernit novisse senectam
Et fati modus in dextra est.”—i. 225-228.
Valerius Maximus (ii. vi. § 12) speaks of Celts who celebrated the birth of men with lamentation, and their deaths with joy.
“Proxima deinde tenent mœsti loca qui sibi lethum
Insontes peperere manu, lucemque perosi
Projecere animas. Quam vellent æthere in alto
Nunc et pauperiem et duros perferre labores.”
—Æneid, vi. 434-437.
Thus Ovid:—
“Rebus in adversis facile est contemnere vitam,
Fortiter ille facit qui miser esse potest.”
See, too, Martial, xi. 56.
See Suetonius, Otho. c. x.-xi., and the very fine description in Tacitus, Hist. lib. ii. c. 47-49. Martial compares the death of Otho to that of Cato: