r,
disease, and poverty happen to men, indifferently to the good and to the
bad; to those who live according to nature and to those who do not.[A]
"Life," says the emperor, "is a warfare and a stranger's sojourn, and
after fame is oblivion" (ii. 17). After speaking of those men who have
disturbed the world and then died, and of the death of philosophers such
as Heraclitus and Democritus, who was destroyed by lice, and of Socrates
whom other lice (his enemies) destroyed, he says: "What means all this?
Thou hast embarked, thou hast made the voyage, thou art come to shore;
get out. If indeed to another life, there is no want of gods, not even
there. But if to a state without sensation, thou wilt cease to be held
by pains and pleasures, and to be a slave to the vessel which is as much
inferior as that which serves it is superior: for the one is
intelligence and Deity; the other is earth and corruption" (iii. 3). It
is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning
to live according to nature (xii. 1). Every man should live in such a
way as to discharge his duty, and to trouble himself about nothing else.
He should live such a life that he shall always be ready for death, and
shall depart content when the summons comes. For what is death? "A
cessation of the impressions through the senses, and of the pulling of
the strings which move the appetites, and of the discursive movements of
the thoughts, and of the service to the flesh" (vi. 28). Death is such
as generation is, a mystery of nature (iv. 5). In another passage, the
exact meaning of which is perhaps doubtful (ix. 3), he speaks of the
child which leaves the womb, and so he says the soul at death leaves its
envelope. As the child is born or comes into life by leaving the womb,
so the soul may on leaving the body pass into another existence which is
perfect. I am not sure if this is the emperor's meaning. Butler compares
it with a passage in Strabo (p. 713) about the Brachmans' notion of
death being the birth into real life and a happy life, to those who have
philosophized; and he thinks Antoninus may allude to this opinion.[B]

[A] "All events come alike to all: there is one event to the
righteous and to the wicked: to the good and to the clean and
to the unclean," &c. (Ecclesiastes, ix. v. 2); and (v. 3),
"This is an evil among all things that are done under the sun,
that there is one event unto all." In what sense "evil" is