32.  Moreover, we may hence conclude that there is great hope that death is a blessing.  For to die is one of two things:  for either the dead may be annihilated, and have no sensation of any thing whatever; or, as it is said, there are a certain change and passage of the soul from one place to another.  And if it is a privation of all sensation, as it were a sleep in which the sleeper has no dream, death would be a wonderful gain.  For I think that if any one, having selected a night in which he slept so soundly as not to have had a dream, and having compared this night with all the other nights and days of his life, should be required, on consideration, to say how many days and nights he had passed better and more pleasantly than this night throughout his life, I think that not only a private person, but even the great king himself, would find them easy to number, in comparison with other days and nights.  If, therefore, death is a thing of this kind, I say it is a gain; for thus all futurity appears to be nothing more than one night.  But if, on the other hand, death is a removal from hence to another place, and what is said be true, that all the dead are there, what greater blessing can there be than this, my judges?  For if, on arriving at Hades, released from these who pretend to be judges, one shall find those who are true judges, and who are said to judge there, Minos and Rhadamanthus, AEacus and Triptolemus, and such others of the demi-gods as were just during their own life, would this be a sad removal?  At what price would you not estimate a conference with Orpheus and Musaeus, Hesiod and Homer?  I indeed should be willing to die often, if this be true.  For to me the sojourn there would be admirable, when I should meet with Palamedes, and Ajax, son of Telamon, and any other of the ancients who has died by an unjust sentence.  The comparing my sufferings with theirs would, I think, be no unpleasing occupation.  But the greatest pleasure would be to spend my time in questioning and examining the people there as I have done those here, and discovering who among them is wise, and who fancies himself to be so, but is not.  At what price, my judges, would not any one estimate the opportunity of questioning him who led that mighty army against Troy, or Ulysses, or Sisyphus, or ten thousand others whom one might mention both men and women—­with whom to converse and associate, and to question them, would be an inconceivable happiness?  Surely for that the judges there do not condemn to death; for in other respects those who live there are more happy than those who are here, and are henceforth immortal, if, at least, what is said be true.

33.  You, therefore, O my judges! ought to entertain good hopes with respect to death, and to meditate on this one truth, that to a good man nothing is evil, neither while living nor when dead, nor are his concerns neglected by the gods.  And what has befallen me is not the effect of chance; but this is clear to me, that now to die, and be freed from my cares is better for me On this account the warning in no way turned me aside; and I bear no resentment toward those who condemned me, or against my accusers, although they did not condemn and accuse me with this intention, but thinking to injure me:  in this they deserve to be blamed.