_M._ Do you not, then, perceive how great is the evil from which you have delivered human nature?
_A._ By what means?
_M._ Because, if to die were miserable to the dead, to live would be a kind of infinite and eternal misery.

Now, however, I see a goal, and when I have reached it, there is nothing more to be feared; but you seem to me to follow the opinion of Epicharmus,[7] a man of some discernment, and sharp enough for a Sicilian.
_A._ What opinion?
for I do not recollect it.
_M._ I will tell you if I can in Latin; for you know I am no more used to bring in Latin sentences in a Greek discourse than Greek in a Latin one.
_A._ And that is right enough.

But what is that opinion of Epicharmus?
_M._ I would not die, but yet Am not concerned that I shall be dead.
_A._ I now recollect the Greek; but since you have obliged me to grant that the dead are not miserable, proceed to convince me that it is not miserable to be under a necessity of dying.
_M._ That is easy enough; but I have greater things in hand.
_A._ How comes that to be so easy?
And what are those things of more consequence?
_M._ Thus: because, if there is no evil after death, then even death itself can be none; for that which immediately succeeds that is a state where you grant that there is no evil: so that even to be obliged to die can be no evil, for that is only the being obliged to arrive at a place where we allow that no evil is.
_A._ I beg you will be more explicit on this point, for these subtle arguments force me sooner to admissions than to conviction.

But what are those more important things about which you say that you are occupied?
_M._ To teach you, if I can, that death is not only no evil, but a good.
_A._ I do not insist on that, but should be glad to hear you argue it, for even though you should not prove your point, yet you will prove that death is no evil.

But I will not interrupt you; I would rather hear a continued discourse.
_M._ What, if I should ask you a question, would you not answer?
_A._ That would look like pride; but I would rather you should not ask but where necessity requires.
IX.