L. VIVES.
VVHich (a) Are indeed] The ancient wise men were euer wont to call the people the great Maister of Error. (b) Cleombrotus] This was the Ambraciot, who hauing * 1.1 read Plato's dialogue called Phaedo of the immortality of the soule, that hee might leaue this life, (which is but as a death,) and passe vnto immortality, threw himselfe ouer a wall into the sea, without any other cause in the world. Of him did Callimachus make an epi∣grame in Greeke, and in Latine, I haue seene it thus.
Vita vale, muro praeceps delapsus ab alto, Dixisti moriens Ambraciota puer: Nullum in morte malum credens; sed scripta Platonis Non ita erant animo percipienda tuo.When Cleombrotus from the turret threw Himselfe to death, he cried, new life, adue: Holding death, hurtlesse: But graue Plato's sense. He should haue read with no such reference.
There was also another Cleombrotus, King of Lacedaemon, whom Epaminondas the The∣bane ouercame. (c) Rather vtterly prohibited] For in the beginning of his Phaedo, hee saith it is wickednesse for a man to kill himselfe: and that God is angred at such a fact, like the maister of a family, when any of his slaues haue killed themselues: and in many other pla∣ces, he saith that without Gods command, no man ought to leaue this life. For here we are all as in a set front of battell, euery one placed, as God our Emperor and Generall pleaseth to appoint vs: and greater is his punishment that forsaketh his life, then his that forsaketh his colours.