Letter 93

In the letter in which you lamented the death of the philosopher Metronax, as though he both could and ought to have lived longer, I missed that fairness of yours which abounds in you toward every person and in every affair, but is lacking in one matter, the one in which it is lacking to all. I have found many men fair toward men, none toward the gods. We chide fate daily: "Why was that man snatched away in mid-course? Why is that other not snatched away? Why does he prolong an old age burdensome both to himself and to others?"

Which, I beseech you, do you judge more fair, that you obey nature, or that nature obey you? And what does it matter how soon you go out from the place from which you must in any case go out? We must take care not to live long, but to live enough; for to live long you need fate, to live enough you need a mind. Life is long if it is full; but it is filled when the mind has given back to itself its own good and has transferred to itself the power over itself.

What do eighty years profit that man who has spent them in idleness? He has not lived, but has tarried in life, nor has he died late, but long. "He lived eighty years." It matters from what day you count his death.

"But that man died green." Yet he discharged the duties of a good citizen, a good friend, a good son; in no part did he fall short. Though his age be incomplete, his life is complete. "He lived eighty years." Nay, he existed eighty years, unless perhaps you say that he lived in the way that trees are said to live. I beseech you, Lucilius, let us see to it that our life, like things of price, be valued not for its great extent, but for its great worth. Let us measure it by its action, not by its time. Do you wish to know what difference there is between this vigorous man, the despiser of fortune, who has discharged all the service-pay of human life and been carried up to its highest good, and that other to whom many years have passed? The one is, even after death; the other perished before death.

Let us, therefore, praise and set in the number of the fortunate that man to whom, however little of time has fallen, it has been well bestowed. For he has seen the true light. He was not one of the many. He both lived and was strong. Sometimes he enjoyed clear weather, sometimes, as is wont, the flash of a bright star shone forth through the clouds. Why do you ask how long he lived? He lives; he has leaped across even to those who come after and has given himself into their memory.

Yet I would not for that reason refuse to have more years added to me; nevertheless I shall say that nothing was lacking to my happy life, if its span is cut short. For I have not fitted myself to that day which greedy hope had promised me as my last, but I have looked on every day as though it were the last. Why do you ask me when I was born, or whether I am still counted among the younger men? I have my own. As a man can be perfect in a smaller stature of body, so too in a smaller measure of time a life can be perfect.

Age is among external things. How long I shall be is another's affair; how long I am, is mine. This you must demand of me, that I do not pass an inglorious life as though in darkness, that I lead my life, not be carried along by it. Do you ask what is the amplest span of life? To live up to wisdom. He who has reached it has touched not the longest end, but the greatest.

Let that man indeed boast boldly and give thanks to the gods, and among them to himself, and let him charge it to the account of the nature of things, that he has been. For he will charge it with reason; he has given it back a better life than he received. He has set up a model of a good man, has shown of what sort and how great a man might be. Had he added anything, it would have been like the past.

And yet how long do we live? We have enjoyed the knowledge of all things. We know from what beginnings nature raises herself, how she orders the universe, by what turns she brings back the year, how she has shut up within bounds all things that were ever to be, and made herself her own limit; we know that the stars move by their own force, that nothing stands still except the earth, that the rest are borne on with unceasing swiftness; we know how the moon outstrips the sun, why the slower leaves behind the swifter, in what manner she receives or loses her light, what cause brings on the night, what brings back the day. Thither one must go where you will behold these things more nearly.

"And it is not in this hope," says that wise man, "that I go out more bravely, that I judge the way to my own gods lies open to me. I have indeed deserved to be admitted, and I have already been among them, and sent my mind to them, and they had sent theirs to me. But suppose me taken out of the way, and that after death nothing remains of the man; I have a mind no less great, even though I depart going nowhere."

He did not live as many years as he could have. A book of few verses too is both to be praised and useful; you know how long are the annals of Tanusius, and what they are called. This is the long life of some men, and what follows the annals of Tanusius.

Do you judge the man happier who is killed on the last day of the games than the one killed in the middle? Do you think anyone so foolishly greedy of life as to prefer to have his throat cut in the spoliarium rather than in the arena? By no greater interval do we go before one another. Death passes through all; he who slays follows the slain. It is the smallest thing about which we are most anxious. And what does it matter to the point how long you avoid what you cannot escape? Farewell.