Page:1888 Cicero's Tusculan Disputations.djvu/62

56 by being torn by those animals, if I have no sensation?" Anaxagoras, when he was at the point of death at Lampsacus, and was asked by his friends, whether, if anything should happen to him, he would not choose to be carried to Clazomenæ, his country, made this excellent answer, "There is," says he, "no occasion for that, for all places are at an equal distance from the infernal regions." There is one thing to be observed with respect to the whole subject of burial, that it relates to the body, whether the soul live or die. Now, with regard to the body, it is clear that, whether the soul live or die, that has no sensation.

XLIV. But all things are full of errors. Achilles drags Hector, tied to his chariot; he thinks, I suppose, he tears his flesh, and that Hector feels the pain of it; therefore, he avenges himself on him, as he imagines. But Hecuba bewails this as a sore misfortune:

I saw (a dreadful sight) great Hector slain,

Dragg'd at Achilles' car along the plain.

What Hector? or how long will he be Hector? Accius is better in this, and Achilles, too, is sometimes reasonable:

I Hector's body to his sire convey'd,

Hector I sent to the infernal shade.

It was not Hector that you dragged along, but a body that had been Hector's. Here another starts from underground, and will not suffer his mother to sleep:

To thee I call, my once-loved parent, hear,

Nor longer with thy sleep relieve thy care;

Thine eye which pities not is closed—arise;

Ling'ring I wait the unpaid obsequies.

When these verses are sung with a slow and melancholy tune, so as to affect the whole theatre with sadness, one can scarce help thinking those unhappy that are unburied:

Ere the devouring dogs and hungry vultures......

He is afraid he shall not have the use of his limbs so well if they are torn to pieces, but is under no such apprehensions if they are burned: