Kitap 4
9.64
He seems to have shown some want of courage in the face of death, repeating often the words, Nature which framed this whole will also destroy it. When he learnt that Antipater committed suicide by drinking a potion, he was greatly moved by the constancy with which he met his end, and exclaimed, Give it then to me also. And when those about him asked What? A honeyed draught, said he. At the time he died the moon is said to have been eclipsed, and one might well say that the brightest luminary in heaven next to the sun thereby gave token of her sympathy.
9.65
According to Apollodorus in his Chronology, he departed this life in the fourth year of the 162nd Olympiad129-128 b.c. at the age of eighty-five years. Letters of his to Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, are extant. Everything else was compiled by his pupils; he himself left nothing in writing. I have written upon him in logaoedic metre as followsAnth. Plan. v. 39.: Why, Muse, oh why wouldst thou have me censure Carneades? For he is ignorant who knoweth not how he feared death. When wasting away with the worst of diseases, he would not find release. But when he heard that Antipater’s life was quenched by drinking a potion,
9.66
Give me too, he cried, a draught to drink. What? pray what? Give me a draught of honeyed wine. He had often on his lips the words, Nature which holds this frame together will surely dissolve it. None the less he too went down to the grave, and he might have got there sooner by cutting short his tale of woes.
