So long as there’s a chance of success, there’s hope that it will happen. This ancient saying goes back to the time of the Greeks and Romans, and presumably at first referred to very ill individuals who, it was hoped, might still recover. It soon was extended to other situations. The Roman writer Seneca reported that Telesphorus of Rhodes, who was put into a cage by the tyrant Lysimachus about 310 b.c., made this statement, adding “only the dead are hopeless.” Cicero used it in Ad Atticum (ca. 49 b.c.), “As a sick man is said to have hope as long as he has life, so did I not cease to hope so long as Pompey was in Italy.” The saying entered numerous proverb collections and remains current, although sometimes it is used in a lighter context: for example, “The soufflé fell but it’s still edible; while there’s life there’s hope.”