From The Histories by Herodotus
(Book 7 Chapter 46:King Xerxes is surveying his great army, and begins to weep. His advisor (and uncle) Artabanus comes up to ask him why he is crying)
“What a difference, O King, between your behavior now and that of only a short time before. Then you considered yourself blessed–now you weep!”
“Yes,” Xerxes answered, “for I was musing on how short is human life, and the pity of it pierced me through. All these multitudes here, and yet, in a hundred years’ time, not one of them will be alive.”
To this Artabanus replied by saying, “But we mortals experience many other causes of suffering that better merit your compassion. Brief though the span of human life may be, yet there is no man here–no, nor anywhere else either–to whom nature grants such happiness that he will not, and on more than one occasion too, wish for death rather than to continue living. So numerous are the misfortunes that befall us, and so terrible the diseases that afflict us, that life in all its brevity still seems long. Death, to a man whose existence is a burden, provides an escape very much worth choosing. That God should grant us merely the briefest taste of how sweet life can be serves to demonstrate just how much he begrudges us it.”
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