ld be wrested from me as
long as I live; but if I, when dead, shall have no consciousness, as
some narrow-minded philosophers imagine, I do not fear lest dead
philosophers should ridicule this my delusion. But if we are not
destined to be immortal, yet it is a desirable thing for a man to
expire at his fit time. For, as nature prescribes a boundary to all
other things, so does she also to life. Now old age is the
consummation of life, just as of a play, from the fatigue of which we
ought to escape, especially when satiety is super-added. This is what
I had to say on the subject of old age, to which may you arrive! that,
after having experienced the truth of those statements which you have
heard from me, you may be enabled to give them your approbation.

II

ON THE DEATH OF HIS DAUGHTER TULLIA[22]

Yes, my dear Servius, I could indeed wish you had been with me, as you
say, at the time of my terrible trial. How much it was in your power
to help me if you had been here, by sympathizing with, and I may
almost say, sharing equally in my grief, I readily perceive from the
fact that after reading your letter I now feel myself considerably
more composed; for not only was all that you wrote just what is best
calculated to soothe affliction, but you yourself in comforting me
showed that you too had no little pain at heart. Your son Servius,
however, has made it clear, by every kindly attention which such an
occasion would permit of, both how great his respect was for myself
and also how much pleasure his kind feeling for me was likely to give
you; and you may be sure that, while such attentions from him have
often been more pleasant to me, they have never made me more grateful.

It is not, however, only your arguments and your equal share--I may
almost call it--in this affliction which comforts me, but also your
authority; because I hold it shame in me not to be bearing my trouble
in a way that you, a man endowed with such wisdom, think it ought to
be borne. But at times I feel broken down, and I scarcely make any
struggle against my grief, because those consolations fail me which
under similar calamities were never wanting to any of those other
people whom I put before myself as models for imitation. Both Fabius
Maximus, for example, when he lost a son who had held the consulship,
the hero of many a famous exploit; and Lucius Paulus, from whom two
were taken in one week; and your own kinsman Gallus; and Marcus Cato,