the true greatness of his soul; and on the last day of his life he held
a long discourse on this subject; and a few days before, when he might
have been easily freed from his confinement, he refused to be so; and
when he had almost actually hold of that deadly cup, he spoke with the
air of a man not forced to die, but ascending into heaven.

XXX. For so indeed he thought himself, and thus he spoke: "That there
were two ways, and that the souls of men, at their departure from the
body, took different roads; for those which were polluted with vices
that are common to men, and which had given themselves up entirely to
unclean desires, and had become so blinded by them as to have
habituated themselves to all manner of debauchery and profligacy, or to
have laid detestable schemes for the ruin of their country, took a road
wide of that which led to the assembly of the Gods; but they who had
preserved themselves upright and chaste, and free from the slightest
contagion of the body, and had always kept themselves as far as
possible at a distance from it, and while on earth had proposed to
themselves as a model the life of the Gods, found the return to those
beings from whom they had come an easy one." Therefore, he argues, that
all good and wise men should take example from the swans, who are
considered sacred to Apollo, not without reason, but particularly
because they seem to have received the gift of divination from him, by
which, foreseeing how happy it is to die, they leave this world with
singing and joy. Nor can any one doubt of this, unless it happens to us
who think with care and anxiety about the soul (as is often the case
with those who look earnestly at the setting sun), to lose the sight of
it entirely; and so the mind's eye, viewing itself, sometimes grows
dull, and for that reason we become remiss in our contemplation. Thus
our reasoning is borne about, harassed with doubts and anxieties, not
knowing how to proceed, but measuring back again those dangerous tracts