Note 3 — Chapter XIV · THE LATER AGE OF THE GREEK WORLD PART I PHILOSOPHY

Not that such hopes or fears were entirely absent. The reader will remember the case of Kleombrotos of Ambrakia (Call., Ep. 25), who by reading the Phaedo of Plato (and completely misunderstanding the meaning of the prophet, as not unfrequently happens) was led to seek an immediate entrance into the life of the other world by a violent break with this one—and committed suicide. This is an isolated example of a mood to which Epiktetos bears witness as common in his own much later time—the desire felt by many young men of ardent temperament to escape from the distracted life of humanity and return as quickly as possible to the universal life of God by the destruction of their own individual existence: Epict. 1, 9, 11 ff. But in the earlier period such violent manifestations of other-worldly fanaticism were of rare occurrence. Hedonism was capable of leading to the same result as we may see from the Ἀποκαρτερῶν of Hegesias the Cyrenaic, called ὁ πεισιθάνατος, whom Cicero mentions together with this same Kleombrotos: TD. i, 83–4.