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Whether "Live Unknown" Be A Wise Precept
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Sec. VII. And yet Pindar tells us[908] that the abode of the blest is a glorious existence, where the sun shines bright through the entire night in meadows red with roses, an extensive plain full of shady trees ever in bloom never in fruit, watered by gentle purling streams, and there the blest ones pass their time away in thinking and talking about the past and present in social converse….[909] But the third road is of those who have lived unholy and lawless lives, that thrusts their souls to Erebus and the bottomless pit, where sluggish streams of murky night belch forth endless darkness, which receive those that are to be punished and conceal them in forgetfulness and oblivion. For vultures do not always prey on the liver of wicked persons lying on the ground,[910] for it is destroyed by fire or has rolled away; nor does the carrying of heavy burdens press upon and tire out the bodies of those that undergo punishment,
“For their strength has no longer flesh and bones,”[911]
nor have the dead any vestige of body that can receive the infliction of punishment that can make impression; but in reality the only punishment of those who have lived ill is infamy and obscurity and utter annihilation, which hurries them off to the dark river of oblivion,[912] and plunges them into the abyss of a fathomless sea, involving them in uselessness and idleness, ignorance and obscurity.
FOOTNOTES:
[895] Probably Epicurus, as we infer from the very personal Sec. iii.
[896] Euripides, Fragm. 930.
[897] Reading with Wyttenbach, [Greek: Alla touto men taute].
[898] Reading [Greek: ekastou] for [Greek: ekaston]. Reiske proposed [Greek: ekaston].
[899] Reading [Greek: ei] (for [Greek: hina]) with Xylander and Wyttenbach.
[900] Reading with Wyttenbach.
[901] Adopting the suggestion of Wyttenbach, “Forte [Greek: kalou], at Amiot.”
[902] Frag. 742.
[903] “Dormiens quisque in peculiarem abest mumdum, expergefactus in communem redit.”– Xylander. Compare Herrick’s Poem, ” Dreames. “
[904] Bright.
[905] Invisible.
[906] [Greek: phos].
[907] Reading with Wyttenbach [Greek: echthairei].
[908] Reading [Greek: phesin] for [Greek: physin].
[909] Hiatus hic valde deflendus.
[910] As was fabled about Tityus, “Odyssey,” xi. 576-579.
[911] “Odyssey,” xi. 219.
[912] So Reiske, [Greek: potamin tes lethes].