Letter 30

I have seen Aufidius Bassus, that most excellent man, shattered and wrestling with his age. But by now it weighs him down more than he can be lifted up; old age has settled upon him with its full and total weight. You know that he was always of a feeble and exhausted body. For a long time he held it together, or, to speak more truly, kept it going; suddenly it has failed.

Just as in a ship that lets in water one leak or another can be stopped, but when it has begun to gape and give way in many places at once, the foundering vessel cannot be saved, so in an aged body the weakness can to some degree be sustained and propped up. But when, as in a crumbling building, every joint is springing apart, and while one is being repaired another splits, then one must look about for the way to make one's exit.

Yet our Bassus is brisk in spirit. This is what philosophy grants: to be cheerful in the sight of death, and brave and glad in whatever state the body may be, and not to fail though the body fail. A great pilot sails even with his sail torn, and, if he has been stripped of his rigging, still fits the remnants of the vessel to its course. This our Bassus does, and contemplates his own end with such a spirit and countenance as you would think too unconcerned were he contemplating another's.

It is a great thing, Lucilius, and long to be learned, to depart with an even mind when that inevitable hour draws near. Other kinds of death have hope mingled with them: a disease ceases, a fire is put out, the falling ruin has set down gently those it seemed about to crush; the sea has cast forth unharmed, by the same force with which it engulfed them, those it had swallowed; the soldier has drawn back his sword from the very neck of one about to perish. But he whom old age leads to death has nothing to hope for. To this one alone there can be no intervention. By no kind of death do men die more gently—yet none more slowly.

Our Bassus seemed to me to be following his own funeral and laying himself out and living as though he had survived himself, and bearing wisely the loss of himself. For he speaks much of death and earnestly takes pains to persuade us that, if there is any hardship or fear in this business, it is the fault of the dying man, not of death; that there is no more trouble in death itself than there is after it.

But he is as mad who fears what he will not suffer as he who fears what he will not feel. Or does anyone believe this will come to pass, that by the very thing through which nothing is felt, that thing should be felt? "Therefore," he says, "death is so far beyond all evil that it is beyond all fear of evils."

These things I know, and that they have often been said and must often be said; but neither when I read them did they profit me equally, nor when I heard them from men who declared that the things were not to be feared while they themselves were far from the fear of them. But this man had the greatest authority with me, since he was speaking of a death close at hand.

For I shall say what I think: I hold that he is braver who is in the very act of death than he who is only near death. For death, when it has drawn close, gives even to the unskilled the resolve not to avoid the unavoidable. So a gladiator, most timid through all the fight, offers his throat to his adversary and guides the wandering sword to himself. But that death which is near at hand and certain to come demands a steady firmness of mind, which is rarer and cannot be furnished except by the wise man.

Most gladly therefore I listened to him, as though he were pronouncing sentence upon death and declaring its nature as one who had inspected it more closely. He would have more credit with you, I think, more weight, if a man had come back to life and told from experience that there is no evil in death; but what disturbance the approach of death brings, those will tell you best who have stood beside it, who have both seen it coming and received it.

Among these you may count Bassus, who would not have us deceived. He says that he is as foolish who fears death as he who fears old age. For just as old age follows youth, so death follows old age. He has refused to live who is unwilling to die. For life was given on the condition of death; it is the journey's end toward which we go. To fear it, therefore, is the mark of a madman, since certainties are awaited, but only doubtful things are feared.

Death has a necessity that is even-handed and unconquerable. Who can complain that he is in a condition in which no one is exempt? And the first part of fairness is equality. But it is needless now to plead the cause of Nature, which willed our law to be no other than her own; whatever she has composed she dissolves, and whatever she dissolves she composes again.

But if it has fallen to a man's lot that old age should release him gently, not torn suddenly from life but withdrawn little by little, oh, how it becomes him to give thanks to all the gods, that, sated, he has been brought to the rest necessary for a man and welcome to the weary! You see some men longing for death, and indeed more eagerly than life is commonly prayed for. I do not know which I should think gives us the greater spirit, those who demand death or those who await it cheerful and at peace; since the former arises sometimes from frenzy and a sudden indignation, but this tranquillity comes from a sure judgement. A man comes to death in anger; but no one receives death gladly when it comes, save him who has long composed himself to meet it.

I confess, then, that for many reasons I came more often to a man dear to me, to learn whether I should find him so many times the same, whether the vigour of his mind would be lessened along with the strength of his body. But it grew in him, just as the joy of charioteers is wont to show itself more plainly when in the seventh lap they draw near the palm.

He used to say indeed, in obedience to the precepts of Epicurus, first that he hoped there would be no pain in that last gasp; but if there were, that there was some consolation in its very brevity. For no great pain is long. Moreover, that even in the very rending apart of mind and body, if it should happen with torment, there would be a relief for him: after that pain he could feel no more. And that he did not doubt the aged soul lay on his very lips and would not be torn from the body by any great force. "A fire that has taken hold of nourishing fuel must be put out with water or sometimes by pulling down the building; but one that fails for lack of fuel sinks of its own accord."

Gladly, my Lucilius, do I hear these things, not as though they were new, but as one brought face to face with the matter itself. What then? Have I not watched many men breaking off their lives? Indeed I have; but those have more weight with me who come to death without hatred of life, and admit it rather than draw it on.

He used to say indeed that this torment we feel by our own doing, that we tremble then, when we believe death to be near us. But from whom is it not near, ready in all places and at all moments? "But let us consider," he said, "when some cause of dying seems to be approaching, how much nearer are other causes which are not feared." An enemy threatened a man with death, and an indigestion forestalled it.

If we are willing to distinguish the causes of our fear, we shall find that some are real and some only seem so. We do not fear death, but the thought of death. For from death itself we are always equally distant. So, if death is to be feared, it is always to be feared. For what time is exempt from death?

But I ought to fear lest you hate letters so long worse than death itself. So I shall make an end. Do you, however, that you may never fear death, always think of it. Farewell.