Almost lost in translation...but you're not allowed to read it anyway

Plato on censorship (Republic 386b).  Plato's arguing that his Republic must censor (expurgate, stifle, purge, repress, etc.)  anything that makes death look bad.  According to Plato, death must be seen as a release, a good thing, "ours is not to reason why," something you really look forward to if you're to get your soldiers to the point where they fear nothing, even death:

But if they are to be courageous, must they not learn other lessons besides these, and lessons of such a kind as will take away [386b] the fear of death? Can any man be courageous who has the fear of death in him?

Certainly not, he said.

And can he be fearless of death, or will he choose death in battle rather than defeat and slavery, who believes the world below to be real and terrible?

Impossible.

Then we must assume a control over the narrators of this class of tales as well as over the others, and beg them not simply to revile, but rather to commend the world below, intimating to them [386c] that their descriptions are untrue, and will do harm to our future warriors.

That will be our duty, he said.

Then, I said, we shall have to obliterate many obnoxious passages, beginning with the verses,

"I would rather be a serf on the land of a poor and portionless man than rule over all the dead who have come to naught."  (Odyssey II .489 sq.)

Achilles tells Odysseus this when his ghost is called up from Hades' halls.  (Hades is the god, you go to his halls when you die).  Basically, being dead sucks, it's boring, painful, gray, dull, don't do it, live as long as you can, Odysseus my man.

It's interesting to see how the translations differ.  See Perseus for the Greek.

Samuel Butler's trans:

I would rather be a paid servant in a poor man's house and be above
ground than king of kings among the dead.

Sir Desmond Lee (Penguin Classics):

I would rather be a serf in the house of some landless man, with little enough for himself to live on, than king of all dead men that have done with life;

WHD Rouse trans:

I would rather be a serf or labouring man
Under some yeoman on a little farm
Than be king paramount of all the dead

Francis Cornford:

I would rather be on earth as the fired servant of another, in the house of a landless man with little to live on, than be king over all the dead.