Ariadne to Theseus, v.

42.] a thousand beasts, a thousand men, are sooner dead than threatened.

That also which we principally pretend to fear in death is pain, its ordinary forerunner: yet, if we may believe a holy father: "Malam mortem non facit, nisi quod sequitur mortem." ["That which follows death makes death bad." -- St.Augustin, De Civit.

Dei, i.

ii.] And I should yet say, more probably, that neither that which goes before nor that which follows after is at all of the appurtenances of death.
We excuse ourselves falsely: and I find by experience that it is rather the impatience of the imagination of death that makes us impatient of pain, and that we find it doubly grievous as it threatens us with death.
But reason accusing our cowardice for fearing a thing so sudden, so inevitable, and so insensible, we take the other as the more excusable pretence.