Some apprehended a purifying virtue in fire, refining
the grosser commixture, and firing out the aethereal
particles so deeply immersed in it. And such as by
tradition or rational conjecture held any hint of the
final pyre of all things; or that this element at last
must be too hard for all the rest; might conceive most
naturally of the fiery dissolution. Others pretending
no natural grounds, politickly declined the malice of
enemies upon their buried bodies. Which consideration
led Sylla unto this practice; who having thus served
the body of Marius, could not but fear a retaliation
upon his own; entertained after in the civil wars, and
revengeful contentions of Rome.
But as many nations embraced, and many left it in-
different, so others too much affected, or strictly de-
clined this practice. The Indian Brachmans seemed
too great friends unto fire, who burnt themselves alive
and thought it the noblest way to end their days in
fire; according to the expression of the Indian, burning
himself at Athens, in his last words upon the pyre
unto the amazed spectators, "thus I make myself im-
mortal.
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