WHETHER VICE IS SUFFICIENT TO CAUSE UNHAPPINESS.

who winters at Babylon, and summers in Media, to vie with him in happiness. * Dost thou bring slavery, and bondage, and sale? Diogenes despises thee, who cried out, as he was being sold by some robbers, "Who will buy a master?" * Dost thou mix a cup of poison? Didst not thou offer such a one to Socrates? And cheerfully, and mildly, without fear, without changing colour or countenance, he calmly drank it up: and when he was dead, all who survived deemed him happy, as sure to have a divine lot in Hades. * And as to thy fire, did not Decius, the general of the Romans, anticipate it for himself, having piled up a funeral pyre between the two armies, and sacrificed himself to Cronos, dedicating himself for the supremacy of his country? And the chaste and loving wives of the Indians strive and contend with one another for the fire, and she that wins the day and gets burnt with the body of her husband, is pronounced happy by the rest, and her praises sung. And of the wise men in that part of the world no one is esteemed or pronounced happy, who does not in his lifetime, in good health and in full possession of all his faculties, separate soul from body by fire, and emerge pure from flesh, having purged away his mortal part. * Or wilt thou reduce a man from a splendid property, and house, and table, and sumptuous living, to a threadbare coat and wallet, and begging of daily bread? Such was the beginning of happiness to Diogenes, of freedom and glory to Crates. * Or wilt thou nail a man on a cross, or impale him on a stake? What cares Theodorus whether he rots above ground or below? Such was the happy mode of burial amongst the Scythians,⁷ and among the Hyrcanians dogs, among the Bactrians birds, devour according to the laws the dead bodies of those