eyes shut.

There is nothing, in my opinion, more illustrious in the life of
Socrates, than that he had thirty whole days wherein to ruminate upon the
sentence of his death, to have digested it all that time with a most
assured hope, without care, and without alteration, and with a series of
words and actions rather careless and indifferent than any way stirred or
discomposed by the weight of such a thought.

That Pomponius Atticus, to whom Cicero writes so often, being sick,
caused Agrippa, his son-in-law, and two or three more of his friends, to
be called to him, and told them, that having found all means practised
upon him for his recovery to be in vain, and that all he did to prolong
his life also prolonged and augmented his pain, he was resolved to put an
end both to the one and the other, desiring them to approve of his
determination, or at least not to lose their labour in endeavouring to
dissuade him. Now, having chosen to destroy himself by abstinence, his
disease was thereby cured: the remedy that he had made use of to kill
himself restored him to health. His physicians and friends, rejoicing at
so happy an event, and coming to congratulate him, found themselves very
much deceived, it being impossible for them to make him alter his
purpose, he telling them, that as he must one day die, and was now so far
on his way, he would save himself the labour of beginning another time.
This man, having surveyed death at leisure, was not only not discouraged
at its approach, but eagerly sought it; for being content that he had
engaged in the combat, he made it a point of bravery to see the end; 'tis
far beyond not fearing death to taste and relish it.

The story of the philosopher Cleanthes is very like this: he had his gums
swollen and rotten; his physicians advised him to great abstinence: