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Pessimism & the Vanity of Life
The great kings are dust and forgotten — so eat, drink, hold your beloved, for the gods kept life for themselves.
A vein of Mesopotamian wisdom looks hard at life's brevity and concludes that lasting achievement eludes everyone. 'The poem of early rulers' observes that even the great kings of old are gone and forgotten, so one should enjoy life while it lasts. In the Gilgamesh epic, the ale-wife Shiduri famously counsels the grieving hero to abandon his hopeless quest for immortality and instead eat, drink, and cherish his family, for the gods kept eternal life for themselves. The Dialogue of Pessimism turns the mood to biting irony. This is the ancient world's clear-eyed reckoning with mortality.
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