from Homer onward, even of death in battle (κοιμήσατο χάλκεον ὕπνον, “he slept the sleep of bronze,” Iliad 11.241). Not only κοιμᾶσθαι but εὕδειν and its compound καθεύδειν are found in this sense (cf. 5:10). Christians took it up as a congenial mode of expression, death being viewed by them as a sleep from which one would awake to resurrection life. In contemporary paganism it was too often viewed as a sleep from which there would be no awaking; cf. Catullus (5.4–6): soles occidere et redire