being also asked of Agis, which way a man might live free? "Why," said
he, "by despising death." These, and a thousand other sayings to the
same purpose, distinctly sound of something more than the patient
attending the stroke of death when it shall come; for there are several
accidents in life far worse to suffer than death itself. Witness the
Lacedaemonian boy taken by Antigonus, and sold for a slave, who being by
his master commanded to some base employment: "Thou shalt see," says the
boy, "whom thou hast bought; it would be a shame for me to serve, being
so near the reach of liberty," and having so said, threw himself from the
top of the house. Antipater severely threatening the Lacedaemonians,
that he might the better incline them to acquiesce in a certain demand of
his: "If thou threatenest us with more than death," replied they, "we
shall the more willingly die"; and to Philip, having written them word
that he would frustrate all their enterprises: "What, wilt thou also
hinder us from dying?" This is the meaning of the sentence, "That the
wise man lives as long as he ought, not so long as he can; and that the
most obliging present Nature has made us, and which takes from us all
colour of complaint of our condition, is to have delivered into our own
custody the keys of life; she has only ordered, one door into life, but a
hundred thousand ways out. We may be straitened for earth to live upon,
but earth sufficient to die upon can never be wanting, as Boiocalus
answered the Romans."--[Tacitus, Annal., xiii. 56.]--Why dost thou
complain of this world? it detains thee not; thy own cowardice is the
cause, if thou livest in pain. There needs no more to die but to will to
die:

"Ubique mors est; optime hoc cavit deus.
Eripere vitam nemo non homini potest;
At nemo mortem; mille ad hanc aditus patent."