Lucian De Morte Peregrini 21

[21] And now, they say, he is playing the mountebank over that very thing, digging a pit, collecting logs, and promising really awesome fortitude. ¹

“What he should have done, I think, was first and foremost to await death and not to cut and run from life; but if he had determined to be off at all costs, not to use fire or any of these devices out of tragedy, but to choose for his departure some other form of death out of the myriads that there are. If, however, he is partial to fire as something connected with Heracles,. why in the world did he not quietly select a wellwooded mountain and cremate himself upon it in solitude, taking along only one person such as Theagenes here for his Philoctetes? ² On the contrary, it is in Olympia, at the height of the festival, all but in the theatre, that he plans to roast himself— not undeservedly, by Heracles, if it is right for parricides and for atheists to suffer for their hardinesses. ³ And from that point of view he seems to be getting about it very late in the day; he ought long ago to have been flung into the bull of Phalaris ⁴ to pay the fitting penalty instead of opening his mouth to the flames once for all and expiring in a trice. For people tell me that no other form of death is quicker than that by fire; you have only to open your mouth, and die forthwith.

[21] That is what all this mystification is about, this digging of pits we hear of, and collecting of firewood; these glowing accounts of fortitude hereafter to be shown. Now, in the first place, it seems to me that a man has no business to run away from life: he ought to wait till his time comes. But if nothing else will serve, if positively he must away,—still there is no need of pyres and such-like solemn paraphernalia: there are plenty of ways of dying without this; let him choose one of them, and have done with it. Or if a fiery end is so attractively Heraclean, what was to prevent his quietly selecting some well-wooded mountain top, and doing his cremation all by himself, with Theagenes or somebody to play Philoctetes to his Heracles? But no; he must roast in full concourse, at Olympia, as it might be ona stage; and, so help me Heracles, he is not far out, if justice is to be done on all parricides and unbelievers. Nay, if we look at it that way, this is but dilatory work: he might have been packed into Phalaris’s bull years ago, and he would have had no more than his deserts,—a mouthful of flame and sudden death is too good for him. For by all I can learn burning is the quickest of deaths; a man has but to open his mouth, and all is over.