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From, A. Toynbee, History,
in R.W. Livingstone (ed.), The Legacy of Greece, Oxford University Press, 1921.
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Page 23
Plato's state of mind gives the atmosphere of the first phase after the catastrophe. For the second phase—the conquest of the East and the struggle for the spoils—the reader may be referred to Mr. Edwyn Bevan's Lectures on the Stoics and Sceptics and to Professor Gilbert Murray's Conway Memorial lecture on The Stoic Philosophy. They will show him a system of philosophy which is no longer a pure product of speculation but is primarily a moral shelter erected hastily to meet the storms of life. The third phase—the rally of civilization in the middle of the third century B. C.—is mirrored in Plutarch's lives of the Spartan kings Agis and Kleomenes. Any one who reads them will feel the gallantry of this rally and the pathos of its failure. And then comes the fourth phase—the Roman wars against the other great powers of the Mediterranean world. The Hannibalic war in Italy was, very probably, the most terrible war that there has ever been, not excepting the recent war in Europe. The horror of that war haunted later generations, and its mere memory made oblivion seem a desirable release from an intolerable world.
Nil igitur mors est ad nos neque pertinet hilum, quandoquidem natura animi mortalis habetur. et velut anteacto nil tempore sensimus aegri, ad confligendum venientibus undique Poenis, omnia cum belli trepido concussa tumultu horrida contremuere sub altis aetheris oris, in dubioque fuere utrorum ad regna cadendum omnibus humanis esset terraque marique, sic, ubi non erimus, cum corporis atque animai discidium fuerit quibus e sumus uniter apti, scilicet haud nobis quicquam, qui non erimus tum, accidere omnino poterit sensumque movere, non si terra mari miscebitur et mare caelo.
That is a passage of Lucretius (iii. 830-842) which follows upon an elaborate argument to prove that death destroys personality and that the soul is not immortal. Here is an attempt at a translation:
'So death is nothing to us and matters nothing to us, since we have proved that the soul is not immortal. And as in time past we felt no ill, when the Phoenicians were pouring in to battle on every front, when the world rocked with the shock and tumult of war and shivered from centre to firmament, when all mankind on sea and land must fall under the victor's empire and victory was in doubt—so, when we have ceased to be, when body and soul, whose union is our being, have been parted, then nothing can touch us—we shall not be—and nothing can make us feel, no, not if earth is confounded with sea and sea with heaven.'
Cf. A History of Ancient Greece * Ancient Greek Political Theory * Greek History Resources
Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome
A History of Greek Philosophy * Greek Orthodoxy - From Apostolic Times to the Present Day
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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-Greece/toynbee-history.asp?pg=23
