testamentory declaration the words that thrill us even now by their
faultless cadence and majestic music;[13] "Not to be born excels on
the whole account; and for him who has seen the light to go whence he
came as soon as may be is next best by far." And in another line,[14]
whose rhythm is the sighing of all the world made audible, "For there
is no such pain," he says, "as length of life." So too the humane and
accomplished Menander, in the most striking of all the fragments
preserved from his world of comedies,[15] weighs and puts aside all
the attractions that life can offer: "Him I call most happy who,
having gazed without grief on these august things, the common sun, the
stars, water, clouds, fire, goes quickly back whence he came." With so
clear-sighted and so sombre a view of this life and with no certainty
of another, it was only the inspiration of great thought and action,
and the gladness of yet unexhausted youth, that sustained the ancient
world so long. And this gladness of youth faded away. Throughout all
the writing of the later classical period we feel one thing
constantly; that life was without joy. Alike in history and poetry,
alike in the Eastern and Western worlds, a settled gloom deepens into
night. The one desire left is for rest. Life is brief, as men of old
time said; but now there is scarcely a wish that it should be longer.
"Little is thy life and afflicted," says Leonidas,[16] "and not even
so is it sweet, but more bitter than loathed death." "Weeping I was
born, and when I have done my weeping I die," another poet wails,[17]
"and all my life is among many tears." Aesopus is in a strait betwixt
two; if one might but escape from life without the horror of dying!
for now it is only the revolt from death that keeps him in the anguish
of life.[18] To Palladas of Alexandria the world is but a slaughter-
house, and death is its blind and irresponsible lord.[19]

From the name of Palladas is inseparable the name of the famous