Sophocles’s Momento Mori

Charles François Jalabeat, Antigone Leads Oedipus Out of Thebes (1849)

Let every man in mankind’s frailty

Consider his last day; and let none

Presume on his good fortune until he find

Life, at his death, a memory without pain.

–Sophocles (Σοφοκλῆς), Oedipus the King (Oἰδίπoυς τύραννoς), l. 1529 (429 BCE)