festivals and merry-making, let us be always restrained by the remembrance of our condition, and let us not be so carried away by pleasure but that at times our memory recalls in how many ways this lightheartedness of ours is exposed to death, and with how many modes of attack death threatens. So did the Egyptians, who, at the height of their festivals, and amid their best cheer, used to have the skeleton of a man brought in, as a warning to the guests.[1]
Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum;
Grata superveniet, quæ non sperabitur hora.[2]
It is uncertain where death awaits us; let us await it everywhere.[3] Prevision of death is prevision of liberty. He who has learned to die has unlearned servitude. To know how to die frees us from all subjection and compulsion. (c) There is nothing evil in life for him who clearly understands that the loss of life is not an evil.[4] (a) Paulus Æmilius replied to the messenger whom that wretched king of Macedonia,[5] his prisoner, sent to him to beg that he would not carry him in his triumph, “Let him make the request to himself.”
In truth, in all things, if Nature does not help a little, it is very hard for art and endeavour to go far. I am myself not melancholy, but given to serious dreaming;[6] there is nothing with which I have always been more occupied than with thoughts of death; yes, even in the most wanton season of my days, —
(a) among ladies and in games it was thought that I was occupied in inwardly considering some suspicion, or an uncertain hope, when I was thinking about some one, whoever
- ↑ See Plutarch, Banquet of the Seven Sages; Herodotus, II, 78.
- ↑ Think of each day that shines upon you as your last; the unhoped-for hours will be welcome when they come. — Horace, Epistles, I, 4.13.
- ↑ This and the four sentences following are taken from Seneca, Epistle 26.
- ↑ See Idem, Epistle 78.
- ↑ Perseus. See Plutarch, Life of Paulus Æmilius.
- ↑ Songecreux.
- ↑ When my flowering life was in its pleasant spring. — Catullus, LXVIII, 16.
