life is always better than death. May not death often be the better of the
two?

LACHES: Yes certainly so in my opinion.

NICIAS: And do you think that the same things are terrible to those who
had better die, and to those who had better live?

LACHES: Certainly not.

NICIAS: And do you suppose that the physician or any other artist knows
this, or any one indeed, except he who is skilled in the grounds of fear
and hope? And him I call the courageous.

SOCRATES: Do you understand his meaning, Laches?

LACHES: Yes; I suppose that, in his way of speaking, the soothsayers are
courageous. For who but one of them can know to whom to die or to live is
better? And yet Nicias, would you allow that you are yourself a
soothsayer, or are you neither a soothsayer nor courageous?

NICIAS: What! do you mean to say that the soothsayer ought to know the
grounds of hope or fear?

LACHES: Indeed I do: who but he?

NICIAS: Much rather I should say he of whom I speak; for the soothsayer
ought to know only the signs of things that are about to come to pass,
whether death or disease, or loss of property, or victory, or defeat in
war, or in any sort of contest; but to whom the suffering or not suffering