These things perhaps you dread, and therefore look on death as an eternal evil.
VI.

_A._ Do you take me to be so imbecile as to give credit to such things?
_M._ What, do you not believe them?
_A._ Not in the least.
_M._ I am sorry to hear that.
_A._ Why, I beg?
_M._ Because I could have been very eloquent in speaking against them.
_A._ And who could not on such a subject?
or what trouble is it to refute these monstrous inventions of the poets and painters ?[6] _M._ And yet you have books of philosophers full of arguments against these.
_A._ A great waste of time, truly! for who is so weak as to be concerned about them?
_M._ If, then, there is no one miserable in the infernal regions, there can be no one there at all.
_A._ I am altogether of that opinion.
_M._ Where, then, are those you call miserable?
or what place do they inhabit?
For, if they exist at all, they must be somewhere.
_A._ I, indeed, am of opinion that they are nowhere.
_M._ Then they have no existence at all.
_A._ Even so, and yet they are miserable for this very reason, that they have no existence.
_M._ I had rather now have you afraid of Cerberus than speak thus inaccurately.
_A._ In what respect?
_M._ Because you admit him to exist whose existence you deny with the same breath.

Where now is your sagacity?
When you say any one is miserable, you say that he who does not exist, does exist.
_A._ I am not so absurd as to say that.
_M._ What is it that you do say, then?
_A._ I say, for instance, that Marcus Crassus is miserable in being deprived of such great riches as his by death; that Cn.

Pompey is miserable in being taken from such glory and honor; and, in short, that all are miserable who are deprived of this light of life.
_M._ You have returned to the same point, for to be miserable implies an existence; but you just now denied that the dead had any existence: if, then, they have not, they can be nothing; and if so, they are not even miserable.
_A._ Perhaps I do not express what I mean, for I look upon this very circumstance, not to exist after having existed, to be very miserable.
_M._ What, more so than not to have existed at all?
Therefore, those who are not yet born are miserable because they are not; and we ourselves, if we are to be miserable after death, were miserable before we were born: but I do not remember that I was miserable before I was born; and I should be glad to know, if your memory is better, what you recollect of yourself before you were born.
VII.

_A._ You are pleasant: as if I had said that those men are miserable who are not born, and not that they are so who are dead.
_M._ You say, then, that they are so?
_A._ Yes; I say that because they no longer exist after having existed they are miserable.
_M._ You do not perceive that you are asserting contradictions; for what is a greater contradiction, than that that should be not only miserable, but should have any existence at all, which does not exist?
When you go out at the Capene gate and see the tombs of the Calatini, the Scipios, Servilii, and Metelli, do you look on them as miserable?
_A._ Because you press me with a word, henceforward I will not say they are miserable absolutely, but miserable on this account, because they have no existence.
_M._ You do not say, then, "M.