“..and there were some who, in their terror of dying, prayed for death.” Pliny the younger, famously describing the plight of the inhabitants of Pompey - from his account of the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79.
...Effectively, a brief but iconic encapsulation of the 'Human Predicament' itself, I'd say; i.e. of how consequent on it’s amoral nature – that everything constituting it is descended unconsciously from logical causes – reality can thereby in principle present as an unsolvable dilemma.