"I weep not for thee, dearest friend; for thou knewest much good; and
likewise God dealt thee thy share of ill."

These epigrams in their clear and unimpassioned brevity are a type of
the Greek temper in the age of reflection. Many others, less simple in
their language, less crystalline in their structure, have the same
quiet sadness in their tone. As it is said in the solemn and
monumental line of Menander, sorrow and life are too surely akin.[10]
The vanity of earthly labour; the deep sorrow over the passing of
youth; the utter loss and annihilation of past time with all that it
held of action and suffering; the bitterness of the fear of death, and
the weariness of the clutch at life; such are among the thoughts of
most frequent recurrence. In one view these are the commonplaces of
literature; yet they are none the less the expression of the
profoundest thought of mankind.

In Greek literature from first to last the view of life taken by the
most serious thinkers was grave and sad. Not in one age or in one form
of poetry alone, but in most that are of great import, the feeling
that death was better than life is no mere caprice of melancholy, but
a settled conviction. The terrible words of Zeus in the Iliad to the
horses of Achilles,[11] "for there is nothing more pitiable than man,
of all things that breathe and move on earth," represent the Greek
criticism of life already mature and consummate. "Best of all is it
for men not to be born," says Theognis in lines whose calm perfection
has no trace of passion or resentment,[12] "and if born, to pass
inside Hades-gates as quickly as may be." Echoing these lines of the
Megarian poet, Sophocles at eighty, the most fortunate in his long and
brilliant life of all his contemporaries in an age the most splendid
that the world has ever witnessed, utters with the weight of a