Death no bane Author:Marcus Tullius Cicero Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: death for the sake of his country. Themisto- cles, Epaminondas, I myself -- not to seek for examples in antiquity and foreign lands -- might all have lived ... more »at ease; but, somehow or other, there is inherent in the mind a forecast of times to come, and this is especially the case and most readily exhibits itself in the highest characters and the loftiest souls. But were this withdrawn, who would be such a simpleton as to live continually amidst toil and danger? I refer now to active leaders of men. But what of poets? Do they not yearn to be famous after death ? Else what mean lines like these : "Look on this form -- here aged Ennius stands, Who sang the deeds wrought by your fathers' hands ? " He demands his meed of glory from them whose fathers he had covered with glory. And again: "Mourn not for me -- no tearful tribute give, For on the lips of living men I live !" But why confine myself to poets? Artists (which word includes sculptors) yearn to be famous after death: else, why did Pheidias insert a likeness of himself on the shield ofhis Minerva, when he was not permitted to place an inscription? What! Do not our philosophers inscribe their names upon those very books which they write about despising glory? But if universal consent be the voice of nature, and all without exception agree that there is something still appertaining to those who have departed this life; we must needs think the same. And if we may suppose that they whose souls are pre-eminent for genius or virtue see farthest into nature's properties, inasmuch as they possess the most perfect natures, it is likely to be true -- as all the best men are the most zealous to serve posterity -- that there is a something of which they will be conscious after death. To proceed. As by natural ...« less