IV. On the Terrors of Death 

    Keep on as you have begun, and make all possible haste, so that you may have longer enjoyment of an improved mind, one that is at peace with itself.  Doubtless you will derive enjoyment during the time when you are improving your mind and setting it at peace with itself; but quite different is the pleasure which comes from contemplation when one's mind is so cleansed from every stain that it shines.  You remember, of course, what joy you felt when you laid aside the garments of boyhood and donned the man's toga, and were escorted to the forum; nevertheless, you may look for a still greater joy when you have laid aside the mind of boyhood and when wisdom has enrolled you among men.  For it is not boyhood that still stays with us, but something worse, - boyishness. And this condition is all the more serious because we possess the authority of old age, together with the follies of boyhood, yea, even the follies of infancy.  Boys fear trifles, children fear shadows, we fear both.  

    All you need to do is to advance; you will thus understand that some things are less to be dreaded, precisely because they inspire u with great fear.  No evil is great which is the last evil of all.  Death arrives; it would be a thing to dread, if it could remain with you.  But death must either not come at all, or else must come and pass away. 

    "It is difficult, however," you say, " to bring the mind to a point where is can scorn life."  But do you not see what trifling reasons impel men to scorn life?  One  hangs himself before the door of his mistress; another hurls himself from the house-top that he may no longer be compelled to bear the taunts of a bad-tempered master; a third, to be saved from arrest after running away, drives a sword into his vitals.  Do not suppose that virtue will be as efficacious as excessive fear?  No man can have a peaceful life who thinks too much about lengthening it, or believes that living through many consulships is a great blessing.  Rehearse this thought every day, that you may be able to depart from life contentedly; for many men clutch and cling to life, even as those who are carried down a rushing stream clutch and cling to briars and sharp rocks. 

    Most men ebb and flow in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardships of life; they are unwilling to live, and yet they do not know how to die.  For this reason, make life as a whole agreeable to yourself by banishing all worry about it.  No good thing renders its professor happy, unless his mind is reconciled to the possibility of loss; nothing, however, is lost with less discomfort than that which, when lost, cannot be missed.  Therefore, encourage and toughen your spirit against the mishaps that afflict even the most powerful.  For example, the fate of Pompey was settled by a boy and a eunuch, that of Crassus by a cruel and insolent Parthian.  Gaius Caesar ordered Lepidus to bare his neck for the axe of the tribune Dexter; and he himself offered his throat to Chaerea.  No man has ever been so far advanced by Fortune that she did not threaten him as greatly as she had previously indulged him.  Do not trust her seeming calm; in a moment the sea is moved to its depths.  The very day the ships have made a brave show in the games, they are engulfed.  Reflect that a highwayman or an enemy may cut your throat; and, though he is not your master, every slave wields the power of life and death over you.  therefore I declare to you: he is lord of your life that scorns his own.  Think of those who have perished through plots in their own homes, slain either openly or by guile; you will then understand that just as many have killed by angry slaves as by angry kings.  What matter, therefore, how powerful he be whom you fear, when every one possesses the power which inspires your fear?  "But," you will say, "if you should chance to fall into the hands of the enemy, the conqueror will command that you be led away," - yes, whither you are already being led.  Why do you voluntarily deceive yourself and require to be told now for the first time what fate it is that you have long been labouring under?  Take my word for it:  since the day you were born you are being led thither.  We must ponder this thought, and thoughts of the like nature, if we desire to be calm as we await the last hour, the fear of which makes all previous hours uneasy.

    But I must end my letter.  let me share with you the saying which pleased me to-day.  It, too, is culled from another man's Garden:  "Poverty, brought into conformity with the law of nature, is brought into conformity with the law of nature, is great wealth."  Do you know what limits that law of nature ordains for us?  Merely to avert hunger, thirst, and cold.  In order to banish hunger and thirst, it is not necessary for you to pay court at the doors of the purse-proud, or to submit to the stern frown, or to the kindness that humiliates; nor is it necessary for you to scour the seas, or go campaigning; nature's needs are easily provided and ready to hand.  It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, - the superfluous things that wear our togas threadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores.  That which is enough is ready to our hands.  He who has made a fair compact with poverty is rich.  Farewell.

XII.  On Old Age

    Wherever I turn, I see evidences of my advancing years.  I visited lately my country-place, and protested against the money which was spent on the tumble-down building.   My bailiff maintained that the flaws were not due to his own carelessness; "he was doing everything possible, but the house was old."  And this was the house which grew under my own hands!  What has the future in store for speak, on the edge of the roof, possesses pleasures of its own.  Or else the very fact of our not wanting pleasures has taken the place of the pleasures themselves.  How comforting it is to have tired out one's appetites, and to have done with them!  "But," you say, "it is a nuisance to be looking death in the face!"  Death, however, should be looked in the face by young and old alike.  We are not summoned according to our rating on the censor's list.  Moreover, no one is so old that it would be improper for him to hope for another day of existence.  And one day, mind you, is a stage on life's journey.

    Our span of life is divided into parts: it consists of large circles enclosing smaller.  One circle embraces and bounds the rest;  it reaches from birth to the last day of existence.  The next circle limits the period of our young manhood.  The third confines all of childhood in its circumference.  Again, there is, in a class by itself, the year;  it contains within itself all the divisions of time by multiplication of which we get the total of life.  The month is bounded by a narrower ring.  The smallest circle of all is the day;  but even a day has its beginning and its ending, its sunrise and its sunset.  Hence Heraclitus, whose obscure style gave him his surname, remarked:  "One day is equal to every day."  Different persons have interpreted the saying in different ways.  Some had that days are equal in number of hours, and this is true; for if by "day" we mean twenty-four hours' time, all days must be equal, inasmuch as the nigh acquires what the day loses.  But others maintain that one day is equal to all days through resemblance, because the very longest space of time possesses no element which cannot be found in a single day, - namely, light and darkness, - and even to eternity day makes these alternations more numerous, not different when it is shorter and different again when it is longer.  Hence, every day ought to be regulated as if it closed the series, as if it rounded out and completed our existence.

    Pacuvius, who by long occupancy made Syria his own, used to hold a regular burial sacrifice in his own honour, with wine and the usual funeral feasting, and then would have himself carried from the dining-room to his chamber, while eunuchs applauded and sang in Greek to a musical accompaniment :  "He has lived his life, he has lived his life!"  Thus Pacuvius had himself carried out to burial every day.  Let us, however, do from a good motive what he used to do from a debased motive; let us go to our sleep with joy and gladness; let us say:  "I have lived; the course which Fortune set for me Is finished."   And is God is pleased to add another day, we should welcome it with glad hearts an is happiest, and is secure in his own possession of himself, who can await the morrow without apprehension.  When a man has said:  "I have lived!", every morning he arises he receives a bonus.

    But now I ought to close my letter.  "What?" you say; "shall it come to me without any little offering?"  Be not afraid; it brings something,- nay, more than something, a great deal.  For what is more noble that he following saying, of which I make this letter the bearer:  "It is wrong to live under constraint; but no man is constrained to live under constraint."  Of course not.  On all sides lie many short and simple paths to freedom; and let us thank God that no man can be kept in life. We may spurn the very constraints that hold us.  "Epicurus," you reply, "Uttered these words; what are you doing with another's property?"  Any truth, I maintain, is my own property.  All I shall continue to heap quotations from Epicurus upon you, so that all persons who swear by the words of another, and put a value upon the speaker and not upon the thing spoken, may understand that the best ideas are common property.  Farwell.

XXIV.  On Despising Death

       You write me that you are anxious about the result of a lawsuit, with which an angry opponent is threatening you; and you expect me to advise you to picture to yourself a happier issue, and to rest in the allurements of hope.  Why, indeed, is it necessary to summon trouble,-which must be endured soon enough when it has once arrived,-or to anticipate trouble and ruin the present through fear of the future? It is indeed foolish to be unhappy now because you may be unhappy at some future time.  But I shall conduct you to peace of mind by another route : if you would put off all worry, assume that what you fear may happen will certainly happen in any event; whatever the trouble may be, measure it in your own mind, and estimate the amount of your fear.  You will thus understand that what you fear is either insignificant or short-lived. And you need not spend a long time in gathering illustrations which will strengthen you; every epoch has produced them.  Let your thoughts travel into any era of Roman or foreign history, and there will throng before you notable examples of high achievement or of high endeavor.

       If you lose this case, can anything more severe happen to you than being sent into exile or led to prison?  Is there a worse fate that any man may fear than being burned or being killed?  Name such penalties one by one, and mention the men who have scorned them; one does not need to hunt for them,-it is simply a matter of selection.  Sentence of conviction was borne by Rutilius as if the injustice of the decision were the only thing which annoyed him.  Exile was endured by Metellus with courage, by Rutilius even with gladness; for the former consented to come back only because his country called him; the latter refused to return when Sulla summoned him,-and nobody in those days said "No" to Sulla!  Socrates in prison discoursed, and declined to flee when certain persons gave him the opportunity; he remained there, in order to free mankind from the fear of two most grievous things, death and imprisonment.  Mucius put his hand into the fire.  It is painful to be burned; but how much more painful to inflict such suffering upon oneself!  Here was a man of no learning, not primed to face death and pain by any words of wisdom, and equipped only with the courage of a soldier, who punished himself for his fruitless daring; he stood and watched his own right hand falling away piecemeal on the enemy's brazier, nor did he withdraw the dissolving limb, with its uncovered bones, until his foe removed the fire.  He might have accomplished something more successful in that camp, but never anything more brave.  See how keener a brave man is to lay hold of danger than a cruel man is to inflict it:  Porsenna was more ready to pardon Mucius for wishing to slay him than Mucius to pardon himself for failing to slay Porsenna!

       "Oh,"  say you, "those stories have been droned to death in all the schools; pretty soon, when you reach the topic 'On Despising Death,' you will be telling me about Cato."  But why should I not tell you about Cato, how he read Plato's book on that last glorious night, with a sword laid at his pillow?  He had provided these two requisites for his last moments,-the first, that he might have the will to die, and the second, that he might have the means.  So he put his affairs in order,- as well as one could put in order that which was ruined and near its end, -and thought that he ought to see to it that no one should have the power to slay or the good fortune to save Cato.  Drawing the sword,-which he had kept unstained from all bloodshed against the final day,- he cried : "Fortune, you have accomplished nothing by resisting all my endeavors.  I have fought, till now, for my country's freedom, and not for my own;   I did not strive so doggedly to be free, but only to live among the free. Now, since the affairs of mankind are beyond hope, let Cato be withdrawn to safety."  So saying, he inflicted a mortal wound upon his body.  After the physicians had bound it up, Cato had less blood and less strength, but no less courage ; angered now not only at Caesar but also at himself, he rallied his unarmed hands against his wound, and expelled, rather than dismissed, that noble soul which had been so defiant of all worldly power.

       I am not now heaping up these illustrations for the purpose of exercising my wit, but for the purpose of encouraging you to face  that which is thought to be most terrible.  And I shall encourage you all the more easily by showing that not only resolute men have despised that moment when the soul breaths its last, but that certain persons, who were craven in other respects, have quelled in this regard the courage of the bravest.  Take, for example, Scipio, the father-in-law of Gnaeus Pompeius : he was driven back upon the African coast by a head-wind and saw his ship in the power of the enemy.  He therefore pierced his body with a sword; and when they asked where the commander was, he replied: "All is well with the commander."  These words brought him up to the level of his ancestors and suffered not the glory with fate gave to the Scorpios in Africa to lose its continuity.  It was a great deed to conquer Carthage, but a greater deed to conquer death.  "All is well with the commander!"  Ought a general to die otherwise, especially one of Cato's generals?  I shall not refer you to history, or collect examples of those men who throughout the ages have despised death; for they are very many.  Consider these times of ours, whose enervation and over refinement call forth our complaints; they never the less will include men of ever rank, of every lot in life, and of every age, who have cut short their misfortunes by death.

       Believe me, Lucilius; death is so little to be feared that through its good  offices nothing is to be feared.  Therefore, when your enemy threatens, listen unconcernedly.  Although your  conscience makes you confident, yet, since many things have weight which are outside your case, both hope for that which is utterly just, and prepare yourself against that which is utterly unjust.  Remember, however, before all else, to strip things of all that disturbs and confuses, and to see what each is at bottom; you will then comprehend that they contain nothing fearful except the actual fear.  What you see happening to boys happens also to ourselves, who are only slightly bigger boys:  when those whom they love, with whom they daily associate, with whom  they play, appear with masks on, the boys are frightened out of their wits.  We should strip the mask, not only from men, but from things, and restore to each object its own aspect.

       "Why dost thou hold up before my eyes swords, fires, and a throng of executioners raging about thee?  Take away all that vain show, behind which thou lurkest and scarest fools!  Ah!  thou art naught but Death, whom only yesterday a manservant of mine and a maid-servant did despise!  Why dost  thou  again unfold and spread before me, with all that great display, the whip and the rack?  Why are those engines of torture made ready, one for each several member of the body, and all the other innumerable machines for tearing a man apart piecemeal?  Away with all such stuff, which makes us numb with terror!  And thou, silence the groans, the cries, and the bitter shrieks ground out of the victim as he is torn on the rack!  Forsooth thou are naught but Pain, scorned by yonder gout-ridden wretch, endured by yonder dyspeptic in the midst  of his dainties, borne bravely by the girl in travail.  Slight thou art, if I can bear thee; short thou art if I cannot bear thee!"

       Ponder these words which you have often heard and often uttered.  Moreover, prove by the result whether that which you have heard and uttered is true.  For there is a very disgraceful charge often brought against our school,-that we deal with the words, and not with the deeds, of philosophy.  

       What, have you only at this moment learned that death is hanging over your head, at this moment exile, at this moment grief?  You  were born to these perils.  Let us think of everything that can happen as something which will happen.  I know that you have really done what I advise you to do; I now warn you not to drown your soul in these petty anxieties of yours; if you do, the soul in these petty anxieties of yours; if you do, the soul will be dulled and will have too little vigor left when the time comes for it to arise.  Remove the mind from this case of yours to the case of men in general.  Say to yourself that our petty bodies are mortal and frail; pain can reach them from other sources than from wrong or the might of the stronger.  Our pleasures themselves become torments; banquets bring indigestion, carousals paralysis of the muscles and palsy , sensual habits affect the feet, the hands, and every joint of the body. 

       I may become a poor man; I shall then be one among many.  I may be exiled; I shall then regard myself as born in the place to which I shall be sent.  They may put me in chains.  What then?  Am I  free from bonds now?  Behold this clogging burden of a body, to which nature has fettered me!  "I shall die,"  you say, you mean  to say; "I shall cease to run the risk of sickness; I shall cease to run the risk of imprisonment; I shall cease to run the risk of death."  I am not so foolish as to go through at this juncture the arguments which Epicurus harps upon, and say that the terrors of the world below are idle,-that Ixion does not whirl round on his wheel, that Sisyphus does not shoulder his stone uphill, that a man's entrails cannot be restored and devoured everyday; no one is so childish as to fear  Cerberus, or the shadows, or the spectral garb of those who are held together by naught but their unfleshed bones.  Death either annihilates us or strips us bare.  If we are then released, there remains the better part, after the burden has been withdrawn; if we are annihilated, nothing remains; good and bad are alike removed.

       Allow me at this point to quote a verse of yours, first suggesting that, when you wrote it, you meant it for yourself no less than for others.  It is ignoble to say one thing and mean another; and how much more ignoble to write one thing and mean another!  I remember one day you were handling the well-known commonplace,-that we do not suddenly fall on death, but advance towards it by slight degrees; we die every day.  For ever day a little of our life is taken from us; even when we are growing, our life is on the wane.  We lose our childhood, then our boyhood, and then our youth.  Counting even yesterday, all past time is lost time; the very day which we are now spending is shared between ourselves and death.  It is not the last drop that empties the water-clock, but all that which previously has flowed out; similarly, the final hour when we cease to exist does not of itself bring death; it merely of itself completes the death-process.  We reach death at that moment, but we have been a long time on the way.  In describing this situation, you said in your customary style (for you are always impressive, but near more pungent than when you are putting the truth in appropriate 4 words):   "Not single is the death which comes; the death.  Which takes us off is but the last of all."   I prefer that you should read your own words rather than my letter; for then it will be clear to you that this death, of which we are afraid, is the last but not the only death.

       I see what you are looking for; you are asking what I have packed into my letter, what inspiriting saying from  some master-mind, what useful precept.  So I shall send you something dealing with this very subject which has been under discussion.  Epicurus upbraids those who crave, as much as those who shrink from, death : "It is absurd,"  he says, "to run towards death because you are tired of life, when it is your manner of life that has made you run towards death."  And in another passage :  "What is so absurd as  to seek death, when it is through fear of death that you have robbed your life of peace?"  And you may add a third statement, of the same stamp:  "Men are so thoughtless, nay, so mad, that some, through fear of death, force themselves to die."

       Whichever of these ideas you ponder, you will strengthen your mind for the endurance alike of death and of life.  For we need to be warned and strengthened in both directions,-not to love or to hate life overmuch; even when reason advises us to make an end of it, the impulse is not to be adopted without reflection or  at headlong speed.  The brave and wise man should not beat a hasty retreat from life; he should make a becoming exit.  And above all, he should avoid the weakness which has taken possession of so many,-the lust of death.  For just as there is an unreflecting tendency of the mind towards other things, so, my dear Lucilius, there is an unreflecting tendency towards death; this often seizes upon the noblest and most spirited men, as well as upon the craven and the abject.  The former despise life; the latter find it irksome. 

       Others also are moved by a satiety of doing and seeing the same things, and not so much by a hatred of life as because they are cloyed with it.  We slip into this condition, while philosophy itself pushes us on, and we say : "How long must I endure the same things?  Shall I continue to wake and sleep, be hungry and be cloyed, shiver and perspire.  There is an end to nothing; all things are connected in a sort of circle; they flee and they are pursued.  Night is close at the heels of day, day at the heels of night; summer ends in autumn, winter rushes after autumn, and winder softens into spring; all nature in this way passes, only to return.  I do nothing new; I see nothing new; sooner or later one sickens of this, also."  There are many who thing that living is not painful, but superfluous.  Farewell.

LIV.   On Asthma And Death

    My ill-health had allowed me a long furlough, when suddenly it resumed the attack.  "When kind of ill-health?"  you say.  And you surely have a right to ask; for it is true that no kind is unknown to me.  But I have been consigned, so to speak, to one special ailment.  I do  not know why I should call it by its Greek name; for it is well enough described as "shortness of breath."  Its attack is of very brief duration, like that of a squall at sea;  it usually ends within an hour. Who indeed could breathe his last for long?  I have passed through all the ills and dangers of the flesh; but nothing seems to me more troublesome than this.  And naturally so; for anything else may be called illness; but this is a sort of continued "last gasp."  Hence physicians call it "practicing how to die."  For some day the breath will succeed in doing what it has so often essayed.  Do you think I am writing this letter in a merry spirit, just because I have escaped?  It would be absurd to take delight in such supposed restoration to health, as it would be for a defendant to imagine that the has won his case when he had succeeded in postponing his trial.  Yet in the midst of my difficult breathing I never ceased to rest secure in cheerful and brave thoughts. 

    "What?"  I say to myself; "does death so often test me?  Let it do so; I myself have for a long time tested death."  "When?"  you ask.  Before I was born.  Death is non-existence, and I know already what that means.  What was before me will  happen again after me.  If there is any suffering in this states, there must have been such suffering also in the past, before we entered the light of day.  As a matter of fact, however, we felt no discomfort then.  And I ask you, would you not say that one was the greatest of fools who believed that a lamp was worse off when it was extinguished than before it was lighted?  We mortals also are lighted and extinguished; the period of suffering comes in between, but on either side there is a deep peace.  For, unless I am very much mistaken, my dear Lucilius, we go astray in thinking that death o9nly follows, when in reality it has both preceded us and will in turn follow us.  Whatever condition existed before our birth, is death.  For what does it matter whether you do not begin at all, or whether you leave off, inasmuch as the result of both these status is non-existence?

    I have never ceased to encourage myself with cheering counsel of this kind, silently, of course, since I had not the power to speak; reduced to a sort of panting, came on at greater intervals, and then slowed down and finally stopped.  Even by this time, although the gasping has ceased, the breath does not come and go normally; I still feel a sort of hesitation and delay in breathing.  Let it be as it pleases, provided there be no sigh from the soul.  Accept this assurance from me:  I shall never be frightened when the last hour comes; I am already prepared and do not plan a whole day ahead.  But do you praise and imitate the man whom it does not irk to die, though he takes pleasure in living.  For what virtue is there in going away when you are thrust out?  And yet there is virtue even in this:  I am indeed thrust out, but it is as if I were going away willingly.  For that reason the wise man can never be thrust out, because that would mean removal from a place which he unwilling to leave; and the wise man does nothing unwillingly.  He escapes necessity, because he wills to do what necessity is about to force upon him.  Farewell.

LXIII.  On Grief For Lost Friends

    I am grieved to hear that your friend Flaccus is dead, but I would not have you sorrow more than is fitting.  That you should not mourn at all I shall hardly dare to insist; and yet I know that it is the better way.  But what man will ever be so blessed with that ideal steadfastness of soul, unless he has already risen far above the reach of Fortune?  Even such a man will be stung by an even like thins, but it will be only a sting.  We, however , may be forgiven for bursting into tears, if only our tears have not flowed to excess, and if we have checked them by our own efforts.  Let not the eyes be dry when we have lost a friend, nor let them overflow.  We may weep, but we must not wail.

    Do you think that the law which I lay down for you is harsh, when the greatest of Greek poets has extended the privilege of weeping to one day only, in the lines where he tells us that even Nioble took though of food?  Do you wish to know the reason for lamentations and excessive weeping?  It is because we seek the proofs of our bereavement in our tears, and do not give way to sorrow, but merely parade it.  No man goes into mourning for his own sake.  Shame on our ill-timed folly!  There is an element of self-seeking even in our sorrow.

    "What," you say," am I to forget my friend?"  It is surely a short-lived memory that you vouchsafe to him, if it is to endure only as long as your grief; presently that brow of yours will be smoothed out in laughter by some circumstance, however casual.  It is to a time no more distant than this that I put off the soothing of every regret, the quitting of even the  bitterest grief.  As soon as you cease  to observe yourself, the picture of sorrow which you have contemplated will fade any away; at present you are keeping watch over your own  suffering.  But even while you deep watch it slips away from you, and the sharper it is, the more speedily it comes to an end.

    Let us see to it that the recollection of those whom we have lost becomes a pleasant memory to us.  No man reverts with pleasure to any subject which he will not be able to reflect upon without pain.  So too it cannot but be that the names of those whom we have loved and lost come back to us with a sort of string; but there is a pleasure even in this sting.  For, as my friend Attalus used to say: "The remembrance of lost friends is pleasant in the same way that certain fruits have an agreeably acid taste, or as in extremely old wines it is their very bitterness that pleases us.  Indeed, after a certain lapse of time, every though that gave pain is quenched, and the pleasure comes to us unalloyed."  If we take the word of Attalus for it, "to think of friends who are alive and well is like enjoying a meal of cakes and honey; the recollection of friends who have passed away gives a pleasure that is not without a touch of bitterness.  Yet who will deny that even these things, which are bitter and contain an element of sourness, do serve to arouse the stomach?"  For my part, I do not agree with him.  To me, the though of my dead friends is sweet and appealing.  For I have had them as if I should one day lose them; I have lost them as if I have them still.

    Therefore, Lucilius, act as befits your own serenity of mind, and cease to put a wrong interpretation on the gifts of Fortune.  Fortune has taken away, but Fortune has given.   Let us greedily enjoy our friends, because we do not know how long this privilege will be ours.  Let us think how often we shall leave them when we go upon distant journeys, and how often we shall fall to see them when we tarry together in the same place; we shall thus understand that we have lost too much of their time while they are alive.  But will you tolerate men who are most careless of their friends, and then mourn them most abjectly, and do not love anyone unless they have lost him?  The reason why they lament too unrestrainedly at such times it that they are afraid lest men doubt whether they really have loved; all too late they seek for proofs of their emotions.  If we have other friends, we surely deserve ill at their hands and think ill of them, if they are of so little account that they fail to console us for the loss of one.  If, on the other hand, we have no other friends, we have injured ourselves more than Fortune has injured us; since Fortune has robbed us for one friend, but we have robbed ourselves of ever friend whom we have failed to make.  Again, he who has been unable to love more than one, has had none too much love even for that one.  If a man who has lost his one and only tunic through robbery chooses to bewail his plight rather than look about him for some way to escape the cold, or for something with which to cover his shoulders, would you not think him an utter fool?

    You have buried one whom you loved; look about for someone to love.  It is better to replace your friend than to weep for him.  What I am about to add is, I know, a very hackneyed remark, but I shall not omit it simply because it is a common phrase:  A man ends his grief by the mere passing of time, even if he has not ended it of his own accord.  But, the most shameful cure for sorrow, in the case of a sensible man, is to grow weary of sorrowing.  I should prefer you to abandon grief, rather than have grief abandon you; and you should stop grieving s soon as possible, since, even if you wish to do so, it is impossible to keep it up for a long time.  Our forefathers have enacted that, in the case of women, a needed to mourn for so long,   In the case of men, no rules are laid down, because to mourn at all is not regarded as honourable.  For all that, what women can you show me, of all the pathetic females that could scarcely be dragged away from the funeral-pile or torn from the corpse, whose tears have lasted a whole month?  Nothing becomes offensive so quickly as grief; when fresh, it finds someone to console it and attracts one or another to itself; but after becoming chronic, it is ridiculed, and rightly.  For it is either assumed or foolish.

    He who writes these words to you is no other than I, who wept so excessively for my dear friend Annaeus Serenus that, in spite of my wishes, I must be included among the examples of men who have been overcome by grief.  To-day, however, I condemn this act of mine, and I understand that the reason why I lamented so greatly was chiefly that I had never imagined it possible for his death to precede mine.  The only thought which occurred to my mind was that he was the younger, and much younger, too,-as if the Fates kept to the order of our ages!

    Therefore let us continually think as much about our own mortality as about that of all those we love.  In former days  I ought to have said:  "My friend Serenus is younger than I; but what does that matter?  He would naturally die after me, but he may precede me."  It was just because I did not do the sudden blow.  Now is the time for you to reflect, not only that all things are mortal, but also that their mortality is subject to no fixed law.  Whatever can happen at any time can happen to-day.  Let us therefore reflect, my beloved Lucilius, that we shall soon come to the goal which this friend, to our own sorrow, has reached.  And perhaps, if only the tale told by wise men is true and there is a bourne to welcome us, then he whom we think we have lost has only been sent on ahead.  Farewell.

XCIII.  On the Quality, as Contrasted With the Length of Life

    While reading the letter in which you were lamenting the death of the philosopher Metronax as if he might have, and indeed ought to have, lived longer, I missed the spirit of fairness which abounds in all your discussions concerning men and things, but is lacking when you approach one single subject,--as is indeed the case with us all.  In other words, I have noticed many who deal fairly with their fellow-men, but none who deals fairly with the gods.  We rail every day at Fate, saying:  "Why has A. been carried off in the very middle of his career?  Why is not B. carried off instead?  Why should he prolong his old age, which is a burden to himself as well as to others?"

    But tell me, pray, do you consider it fairer that you should obey Nature, or that Nature should obey you?  And what difference does it make how soon you depart from a place which you must depart from sooner or later?  We should strive, not to live long, but to live rightly; for to achieve long life you have need of Fate only, but for right living you need the soul.  A life is really long if it is a full life; but fulness is not attained until the soul has rendered to itself its proper Good, that is, until it has assumed control over itself.  What benefit does this older man derive from the eighty years he has spent in idleness?  A person like him has not lived; he has merely tarried awhile in life.  Nor has he died late in life; he has simply been a long time dying.  He has lived eighty years, has he?  That depends upon the date from which you reckon his death!  Your other friend, however, departed in the bloom of has manhood.  But he had fulfilled all the duties of a good citizen, a good friend, a good son; in no respect had he fallen short.  His age may have been incomplete, but his life was complete.  The other man has lived eighty years, has he?  Nay, he has existed eighty years, unless perchance you mean by "he has lived" what we mean when we say that a tree "lives."

    Pray, let us see to it, my dear Lucilius, that our lives, like jewels of great price, be noteworthy not because of their width but because of their weight.  Let us measure them by their performance, not by their duration.  Would you know wherein lies the difference between this hardy man who, despising Fortune, has served through every campaign of life and has attained to life's Supreme Good, and that other person over whose head many years have passed?  The former exists even after his death; the latter has died even before he was dead.

    We should therefore praise, and number in the company of the blest, that man who has invested well the portion of time, however little, that has been allotted to him; for such a one has seen the true light.  He has not been one of the common herd.  He has not only lived, but flourished.  Sometimes he enjoyed fair skies; sometimes, as often happens, it was only through the clouds that there flashed to him the radiance of the mighty star.  Why do you ask:  "How long did he live?"  He still lives!  At one bound he has passed over into posterity and has consigned himself to the guardianship of memory.

     And yet I would not on that account decline for myself a few additional years; although, if my life's space be shortened, I shall not say that I have lacked aught that is essential to a happy life.  For I have not planned to live up to the very last  day that my greedy hopes had promised me; nay, I have looked upon every day as if it were my last.  Why ask the date of my birth, or whether I am still enrolled on the register of the younger men?  What I have is my own.  Just as one of small stature can be a perfect man, so a life of small compass can be a perfect life.  Age ranks among the external things.  How long I am to exist is not mine to decide, but how long I shall go on existing in my present way is in my own control.  This is the only thing you have the right to require of me,--that I shall cease to measure out an inglorious age as it were in darkness, and devote myself to living instead of being carried along past life.

    And what, you ask, is the fullest span of life?  It is living until you possess wisdom.  He who has attained wisdom has reached, not the furthermost, but the most important, goal.  Such a one may indeed exult boldly and give thanks to the gods--aye, and to himself also--and he may count himself Nature's creditor for having lived.  He will indeed have the right to do so, for he has paid her back a better life than he has received.  He has set up the pattern of a good man, showing the quality and the greatness of a good man.  Had another year been added, it would merely have been like the past.

    And yet how long are we to keep living?  We have had the joy of learning the truth about the universe.  We know from what beginnings Nature arises; how she orders the course of the heavens; by what successive changes she summons back the year; how she has brought to an end all things that ever have been, and has established herself as the only end of her own being.  We know that the stars move by their own motion, and that nothing except the earth stands still while all the other bodies run on with uninterrupted swiftness.  We know how the moon outstrips the sun; why it is that the slower leaves the swifter behind; in what manner she receives her light, or loses it again, what brings on the night, and what brings back the day.  To that place you must go where you are to have a closer view of all these things.  "And yet," says the wise man, "I do not depart more valiantly because of this hope--because I judge the path lies clear before me to my own gods.  I have indeed earned admission to their presence, and in fact have already been in their company; I have sent my soul to them as they had previously sent theirs to me.  But suppose that I am utterly annihilated, and that after death nothing mortal remains; I have no less courage, even if, when I depart, my course leads--nowhere."

    "But," you say, "he has not lived as many years as he might have lived."  There are books which contain very few lines, admirable and useful in spite of their size; and there are also the Annals of Tanusius,--you know how bulky the book is, and what men say of it.  This is the case with the long life of certain persons,--a state which resembles the Annals of Tanusius!  Do you regard as more fortunate the fighter who is slain on the last day of the games than one who goes to his death in the middle of the festivities?  Do you believe that anyone is so foolishly covetous of life that he would rather have his throat cut in the dressing-room than in the amphitheatre?  It is by no longer an interval than this that we precede one another.  Death visits each and all; the slayer soon follows the slain.  It is an insignificant trifle, after all, that people discuss with so much concern.  And anyhow, what does it matter for how long a time you avoid that which you cannot escape?    

    Farewell.

XCIX.   On Consolation to the Bereaved

    I enclose a copy of the letter which I wrote to Marullus at the time when he had lost his little son and was reported to be rather womanish in his grief--a letter in which I have not observed the usual form of condolence:  for I did not believe that he should be handled gently, since in my opinion he deserved criticism rather than consolation.  When a man is stricken and is finding it most difficult to endure a grievous wound, one must humour him for a while;  let him satisfy his grief or at any rate work off the first shock; but those who have assumed an indulgence in grief should be rebuked forthwith, and should learn that there are certain follies even in tears.

    "Is it solace that you look for?  Let me give you a scolding  instead!  You are like a woman in the way you take your son's death; what would you do if you had lost an intimate friend?  A son, a little child of unknown promise, is dead; a fragment of time has been lost.  We hunt out excuses for grief; we would even utter unfair complaints about Fortune, as if Fortune would never give us just reason for complaining!  But I had really thought that you possessed spirit enough to deal with concrete troubles, to say nothing of the shadowy troubles over which men make moan through force of  habit.  Had you lost a friend (which is the greatest blow of all), you would have had to endeavour rather to rejoice because you had possessed him than to mourn because you had lost him.

    "But many men fail to count up how manifold their gains have been, how great their rejoicings.  Grief like yours has this among other evils:  it is not only useless, but thankless.  Has it then all been for nothing that you have had such a friend?  During so many years, amid such close associations, after such intimate communion of personal interests, has nothing been accomplished?  Do you bury friendship along with a friend?  And why lament having lost him, if it be of no avail to have possessed him?  Believe me, a great part of those we have loved, though chance has removed their persons, still abides with us.  The past is ours, and there is nothing more secure for us than that which has been.  We are ungrateful for past gains, because we hope for the future, as if the future--if so be that any future is ours--will not be quickly blended with the past.  People set a narrow limit to their enjoyments if they take pleasure only in the present; both the future and the past serve for our delight--the one with anticipation, and the other with memories--but the one is contingent and may not come to pass, while the other must have been.

    "What madness it is, therefore, to lose our grip on that which is the surest thing of all?  Let us rest content with the pleasures we have quaffed in past days, if only, while we quaffed them, the soul was not pierced like a sieve, only to lose again whatever it had received.  There are countless cases of men who have without tears buried sons in the prime of manhood--men who have returned from the funeral pyre to the Senate chamber, or to any other official duties, and have straightway busied themselves with something else.  And rightly; for in the first place it is idle to grieve if you get no help from grief.  In the second place, it is unfair to complain about what has happened to one man but is in store for all.  Again, it is foolish to lament one's loss, when there is such a slight interval between the lost and the loser.  Hence we should be more resigned in spirit, because we follow closely those whom we have lost.

    "Note the rapidity of Time--that swiftest of things; consider the shortness of the course along which we hasten at top speed; mark this throng of humanity, all straining toward the same point with briefest intervals between them--even when they seem longest; he whom you count as passed away has simply posted on ahead.  And what is more irrational than to bewail your predecessor, when you yourself must ravel on the same journey?  Does a man bewail an event which he knew would take place?  Or, if he did not think of death as man's lot, he has but cheated himself.  Does a man bewail an event which he has been admitting to be unavoidable?  Whoever complains about the death of anyone, is complaining that he was a man.  Everyone is bound by the same terms:  he who is privileged to be born, is destined to die.  Periods of time separate us, but death levels us.  The period which lies between our first day and our last is shifting and uncertain:  if you reckon it by its troubles, it is long even to a lad, if by its speed, it is scanty even to a greybeard.  Everything is slippery, treacherous, and more shifting than any weather.  All things are tossed about and shift into their opposites at the bidding of Fortune; amid such a turmoil of mortal affairs nothing but death is surely in store for anyone.  And yet all men complain about the one thing wherein none of them is deceived.  'But he died in boyhood.'  I am not yet prepared to say that he who quickly comes to the end of his life has the better of the bargain; let us turn to consider the case of him who has grown to old age.  How very little is he superior to the child!  Place before your mind's eye the vast spread of time's abyss, and consider the universe; and then contrast our so-called human life with infinity:  you will then see how scant is that for which we pray, and which we seek to lengthen.  How much of this time is taken up with weeping, how much with worry!  How much with prayers for death before death arrives, how much with our health, how much with our fears!  How much is occupied by our years of inexperience  or of useless endeavour!  And half of all this time is wasted in sleeping.  Add, besides, our toils, our griefs, our dangers--and you will comprehend that even in the longest life real living is the least portion thereof.  Nevertheless, who will make such an admission as:  'A man is not better off who is allowed to return home quickly, whose journey is accomplished before he is wearied out'?  Life is neither a Good nor an Evil; it is simply the place where good and evil exist.  Hence this little boy has lost nothing except a hazard where loss was more assured than gain.  He might have turned out temperate and prudent; he might, with our fostering care, have been moulded to a better standard; but (and this fear is more reasonable) he might have become just like the many.  Note the youths of the noblest lineage whose extravagance has flung them into the arena; note those men who cater to the passions of themselves and others in mutual lust, whose days never pass without drunkenness or some signal act of shame; it will thus be clear to you that there was more to fear than to hope for.

    "For this reason you ought not to invite excuses for grief or aggravate slight burdens by getting indignant.  I am not exhorting you to make an effort and rise to great heights; for my opinion of you is not so low as to make me think that it is necessary for you to summon every bit of your virtue to face this trouble.  Yours is not pain; it is a mere sting--and it is you yourself who are turning it into pain.

    "Of a surety philosophy has done you much service if you can bear courageously the loss of a boy who was as yet better known to his nurse than to his father!  And what, then?  Now, at this time, am I advising you to be hard-hearted, desiring you to keep your countenance unmoved at the very funeral ceremony, and not allowing your soul even to feel the pinch of pain?  By no means.  That would mean lack of feeling rather than virtue--to behold the burial ceremonies of those near and dear to you with the same expression as you beheld their living forms, and to show no emotion over the first bereavement in your family.  But suppose that I forbade you to show emotion; there are certain feelings which claim their own rights.  Tears fall, no matter how we try to check them, and by being shed they ease the soul  What, then, shall we do?  Let us allow them to tall, but let us not command them do so; let us weep according as emotion floods our eyes, but not as much as mere imitation shall demand.  Let us, indeed, add nothing to natural grief, nor augment it by following the example of others.  The display of grief makes more demands than grief itself:  how few men are sad in their own company!  They lament the louder for being heard; persons who are reserved and silent when alone are stirred to new paroxysms of tears when they behold others near them!  At such times they lay violent hands upon their own persons,--though they might have done this more easily if no one were present to check them; at such times they pray for death; at such times they toss themselves from their couches.  But their grief slackens with the departure of onlookers.  In this matter, as in others also, we are obsessed by this fault--conforming to the pattern of the many, and regarding convention rather than duty.  We abandon nature and surrender to the mob--who are never good advisers in anything, and in this respect as in all others are most inconsistent.  People see a man who bears his grief bravely:  they call him undutiful and savage-hearted; they see a man who collapses and clings to his dead:  they call him womanish and weak.  Everything, therefore, should be referred to reason.  But nothing is more foolish than to court a reputation for sadness and to sanction tears; for I hold that with a wise man some tears fall by consent, others by their own force.

    "I shall explain the difference as follows:  When the first news of some bitter loss has shocked us, when we embrace the form that will soon pass from our arms to the funeral flames--then tears are wrung from us by the necessity of Nature, and the life-force, smitten by the stroke of grief shakes both the whole body, and the eyes also, from which it presses out and causes to flow the moisture that lies within.  Tears like these fall by a forcing-out process, against our will; but different are the tears which we allow to escape when we muse in memory upon those whom we have lost.  And there is in them a certain sweet sadness when we remember the sound of a pleasant voice, a genial conversation, and the busy duties of yore; at such a time the eyes are loosened, as it were, with joy.  This sort of weeping we indulge; the former sort overcomes us.

    "There is, then, no reason why,  just because a group of persons is standing in your presence or sitting at your side, you should either check or pour forth your tears; whether restrained or outpoured, they are never so disgraceful as when feigned.  Let them flow naturally.  But it is possible for tears to flow from the eyes of those who are quiet and at peace.  They often flow without impairing the influence of the wise man--with such restraint that they show no want either of feeling or of self-respect.  We may, I assure you, obey Nature and yet maintain our dignity.  I have seen men worthy of reverence, during the burial of those near and dear, with countenances upon which love was written clear even after the whole apparatus of mourning was removed, and who showed no other conduct than that which was allowed to genuine emotion.  There is a comeliness even in grief.  This should be cultivated by the wise man; even in tears, just as in other matters also, there is a certain sufficiency; it is with the unwise that sorrows, like joys, gush over.

    "Accept in an unruffled spirit that which is inevitable.  What can happen that is beyond belief?  Or what that is new?  How many men at this very moment are making arrangements for funerals!  How many are purchasing grave-clothes!  How many are mourning, when you yourself have finished mourning!  As often as you reflect that your boy has ceased to be, reflect also upon man, who has no sure promise of anything, whom Fortune does not inevitably escort to the confines of old age, but lets him go at whatever point she sees fit.  You may, however, speak often concerning the departed, and cherish his memory to the extent of your power.  This memory will return to you all the more often if you welcome its coming without bitterness; for no man enjoys converse with one who is sorrowful, much less with sorrow itself.  And whatever words, whatever jests of his, no matter how much of a child he was, may have given you pleasure to hear--these I would have you recall again and  again; assure yourself confidently that he might have fulfilled the hopes which you, his father, had entertained.  Indeed, to forget the beloved dead, to bury their memory along with their bodies, to bewail them bounteously and afterwards think of them but scantily--this is the mark of a soul below that of man.  For that is the way in which birds and beasts love their young; their affection is quickly roused and almost reaches madness, but it cools away entirely when its object dies.  This quality does not befit a man of sense; he should continue to remember, but should cease to mourn.  And in no wise do I approve of the remark of Metrodorus--that there is a certain pleasure akin to sadness, and that one should give chase thereto at such times as these.  I am quoting the actual words of Metrodorus.  I have no doubt what your feelings will be in these maters; for what is baser than to 'chase after' pleasure in the very midst of mourning--nay rather by means of mourning--and even amid one's tears to hunt out that which will give pleasure?  These are the men who accuse us of too great strictness, slandering our precepts because of supposed harshness--because (say they) we declare that grief should either not be given place in the soul at all, or else should be driven out forthwith.  But which is the more incredible or inhuman--to feel no grief at the loss of one's friend, or to go a-hawking after pleasure in the midst of grief?  That which we Stoics advise, is honourable; when emotion has prompted a moderate flow of tears, and has, so to speak, ceased to effervesce, the soul should not be surrendered to grief  But what do you mean, Metrodorus,  by saying  that with our very grief there should be a blending of pleasure?  That is the sweetmeat method of pacifying children; that is the way we still the cries of infants by pouring milk down their throats!

    "Even at the moment when your son's body is on the pyre, or your friend breathing his last, will you not suffer your pleasure to cease, rather than tickle your very grief with pleasure?  Which is the more honourable--to remove grief from your soul, or to admit pleasure even into the company of grief?  Did I say 'admit'?  Nay, I mean 'chase after,' and from the hands, too, of grief itself.  Metrodorus says:  'There is a certain pleasure which is related to sadness.'  We Stoics may say that, but you may not.  The only Good which you recognize, is pleasure, and the only Evil, pain; and what relationship can there be between a Good and an Evil?  But suppose that such a relationship does exist; now, of all times, is it to be rooted out?  Shall we examine grief also, and see with what elements of delight and pleasure it is surrounded?  Certain remedies, which are beneficial for some parts of the body, cannot be applied to other parts because these are, in a way revolting and unfit; and that which in certain cases would work to a good purpose without any loss to one's self=respect, may become unseemly because of the situation of the wound.  Are you not, similarly, ashamed to cure sorrow by pleasure?  No, this sore spot must be treated in a more drastic way.  This is what you should preferably advise:  that no sensation of evil can reach one who is dead; for if it can reach him, he is not dead.  And I say that nothing can hurt him who is a naught; for if a man can be hurt, he is alive.  Do you think him to be badly off because he is no more, or because he still exists as somebody?  And  yet no torment can come to him from the fact that he is no more--for what feeling can belong to one who does not exist?--nor from the fact that he exists; for he has escaped the greatest disadvantage that death has in it--namely, non-existence.

    "Let us say this also to him who mourns and misses the untimely dead:  that all of  us, whether young or old, live, in comparison with eternity, on the same level as regards our shortness of life.  For out of all time there comes to us less than what anyone could call least, since 'least' is at any rate some part; but this life of ours is next to nothing, and yet (fools that we are!) , we marshal it in broad array!

    "These words I have written to you, not with the idea that you should expect a cure from me at such a late date--for it is clear to me that you have told yourself everything that you will read in my letter--but with the idea that I should rebuke you even for the slight delay during which you lapsed from your true self, and should encourage you for the future, to rouse your spirit against Fortune and to be on the watch for all her missiles, not as if  they might possibly come, but as if they were bound to come."  

    Farewell.