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Section 41

Let us also consider how great a hope there is that death is a good thing. For death is one of two things: either it is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness for the dead man, or, according to what people say, it is a change and a migration of the soul from this place to another. If it is unconsciousness, like a sleep in which the sleeper sees no dreams, death would be a wondrous gain. I think if a man were to select the night he slept so soundly he did not even dream, and compare it with the other nights and days of his life, and had to declare how many days and nights he had lived better and more pleasantly than that one night, I think that not only a private citizen, but the Great King himself would find them easy to count compared to the others. If death is like that, I call it a gain, for all eternity would seem no longer than a single night. If, on the other hand, death is a journey from here to another place, and the stories are true that all the dead are there, what greater good could there be than this, judges? If upon arriving in Hades, having escaped these self-styled judges here, one finds the true judges who are said to sit in judgment there—Minos, Rhadamanthys, Aeacus, and Triptolemus, and other demigods who were just in their own lives—would that be a bad journey? Or to associate with Orpheus, Musaeus, Hesiod, and Homer—how much would any of you pay for that? I am willing to die many times over if these things are true. For my own part, the conversations there would be wondrous, meeting Palamedes and Ajax the son of Telamon, and anyone else from ancient times who died through an unjust judgment. Comparing my experiences with theirs would not be unpleasant, I think. And the greatest pleasure would be spending my time examining and questioning the people there, just as I do here, finding out who among them is wise, and who thinks he is but is not. How much would one pay, judges, to examine the man who led the great army against Troy, or Odysseus, or Sisyphus, and countless other men and women? To converse with them, associate with them, and examine them there would be an unimaginable happiness. Surely those there do not put people to death for it! They are happier than the people here in every way, and for the rest of time they are immortal, if the stories are true.