Just imagine how much less bearable and more painful an immortal life would be for mankind than the life I have given you. If you did not have death, you would curse me forever for depriving you of it. Indeed, I have deliberately mixed death with a little bitterness to prevent the advantages of it from causing you to embrace it too quickly or too rashly. To keep you in the moderate state that I wish, not fleeing either from life or from death, I have tempered each of those states with pleasure and with pain.
