Man and Beast

Among all creatures that breathe on earth and crawl on it there is not anywhere a thing more dismal than man is.

—Zeus, in Homer, Iliad, XVII.446-447, translated by Richmond Lattimore (1951).

For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same. As one dies so dies the other; indeed, they all have the same breath and there is no advantage for man over beast, for all is vanity. All go to the same place. All came from the dust and all return to the dust. Who knows that the breath of man ascends upward and the breath of the beast descends downward to the earth?

 —Solomon, Ecclesiastes.