Axiochus

and stout-hearted words which I was wont to cast at death, do closely flit away and down are trodden underfoot. And then that Tormentor fear, the messenger of dreaded dangers, doth sundry ways wound and gall my grieved mind, whispering continually in mine ear that if I be once deprived of this worldly light, and bereft of goods: I shall like a rotten block lie in the darksome depth, neither seen nor heard of any, being resolved into dust and worms.

O Axiochus thy talk is very foolish, for reasoning thus without reason, and seeking to make some fence of fenceless words, thou both dost and sayest clean contrary to thyself, not marking, how at one time thou dost both complain for the lack of fence meaning: sensation or perception which thou shalt have: and also art greatly vexed for the rotting of thy carrion Carcass, and despoiling of thy former delights: as if by this death thou shouldest not pass into another life, or shouldest be so despoiled of all fence and feeling, as thou wert before thou wast first brought into this world. For even as in those years when Draco and Callisthenes governed the commonwealth of Athens, thou then wast vexed with no evil, for in the beginning thou wast no such as to