Lactantius — Divine Institutes 3.19

But those who dispute about death's good, because they know nothing true, argue thus: if there is nothing after death, death is not an evil; for it removes sense of evil. But if souls survive, it is even a good, because immortality follows. Which opinion Cicero explained thus in the Laws: and let us congratulate ourselves, since death will bring a state either better than what is in life or at least not worse: for without body, with mind vigorous, there is divine life; with sense lacking there is certainly nothing of evil. Cleverly, as they think, as if nothing else could be. But both of these are false.

For the divine letters teach that souls are not extinguished, but are either visited with prize for justice or with everlasting penalty for crimes. For it is not right either that one who was criminal in life yet fortunate should escape what he deserves, or that one who was most wretched because of justice should be cheated of his wage. Which is so true that the same Tullius in the Consolation declared that the just and the impious do not inhabit the same seats. For not for all, he says, did those same wise men think the same course into heaven lies open. For they taught that those contaminated by vices and crimes are pressed down into darkness and lie in filth, but that chaste minds, pure, whole, uncorrupted, polished also by good studies and arts, by a certain light and easy gliding fly through to the gods—that is, to a nature like themselves.

Which opinion fights that earlier argument. For that was assumed as if it were necessary that every human born be gifted with immortality. What then will be the discrimination of virtue and crime, if it makes no difference whether someone is an Aristides or a Phalaris, a Cato or a Catiline? But this conflict of things and opinions is seen only by one who holds the truth. If therefore anyone asks us whether death is a good or an evil, we will answer that its quality hangs from the manner of life. For just as life itself is a good if it is lived with virtue, an evil if with crime, so also death is to be weighed from the past acts of life. Thus it happens that if life has been spent in God's religion, death is not an evil, because it is a transfer to immortality: but if otherwise, it must be an evil, since as I said it sends across to eternal punishments.

What then shall we say except that those err who either seek death as a good or flee life as an evil?—except that they are most unjust who do not balance fewer evils against more goods. For when they lead all life through sought-out and various pleasures, they desire to die if any bitterness happens to them, and so hold it as if it had never been well with them if it was ever badly. Therefore they condemn all life and think it full of nothing other than evils. Hence was born that foolish opinion, that this is death which we think life, that life which we fear as death: so that the first good is not to be born, the second to die sooner. Which, that it may have greater authority, is attributed to Silenus. Cicero in the Consolation: not to be born, he says, is by far best, nor to fall upon these reefs of life; but next, if you have been born, to flee as soon as possible as from fortune's fire.

That he believed that emptiest saying appears from this, that he added something of his own to adorn it. I ask therefore for whom he thinks it best not to be born, when there is no one at all who senses it: for that something be good or evil, sense makes it. Next, why he thought all life nothing other than reefs and fire: as if either it had been in our power that we not be born, or fortune rather than God grants us life, or the manner of living seems to have anything like a fire.

Not unlike is that of Plato, that he said he gave thanks to nature: first that he had been born a human rather than a mute animal, then a male rather than a female, a Greek rather than a barbarian, finally an Athenian and in Socrates' times. It cannot be said how much blindness to minds, how many errors ignorance of the truth bears. I would plainly contend that never has anything more delirious been said in human affairs: as if if he had been born a barbarian or a woman or finally an ass, that same Plato would be, and not that very thing which he had been born. But clearly he believed Pythagoras, who, that he might forbid humans to eat animals, said souls pass from bodies into other animals' bodies. Which is both empty and impossible: empty, because it was not necessary to lead old souls into new bodies, when the same craftsman who had once made the first could always make new; impossible, because a soul of right reason cannot change the nature of its standing any more than fire can press downward or pour its flame sideways in the manner of a river.

Therefore the wise human thought it could happen that the soul which then was in Plato might be shut in some mute animal and be endowed with human sense, so that it would understand and grieve that it was burdened with an unfit body. How much more sanely he would act if he said he gave thanks that he was born talented, teachable, in such means that he might be liberally educated! For that he was born at Athens—what benefit was in that? Or did not very many exist in other cities, men of excellent talent and learning, who one by one were better than all the Athenians? How many thousands of humans should we believe there were who, born both at Athens and in Socrates' times, were nevertheless unlearned and foolish? For neither walls nor the place in which each was poured from the womb wins wisdom for a human. And what did it matter to congratulate himself that he was born in Socrates' times? Could Socrates lend talents to learners? Did it not come into Plato's mind that Alcibiades also and Critias were constant hearers of the same Socrates, of whom the one was the fiercest enemy of the fatherland, the other the cruelest of all tyrants?