Marcus Aurelius · 121–180 CE
Meditations 4.50 — Marcus Aurelius
Translation by George Long (1862)
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.50
It is a vulgar, but still a useful help towards contempt of death, to pass in review those who have tenaciously stuck to life. What more then have they gained than those who have died early? Certainly they lie in their tombs somewhere at last, Cadicianus, Fabius, Julianus, Lepidus, or anyone else like them, who have carried out many to be buried, and then were carried out themselves. Altogether the interval is small between birth and death; and consider with how much trouble, and in company with what sort of people and in what a feeble body this interval is laboriously passed. Do not then consider life a thing of any value. For look to the immensity of time behind thee, and to the time which is before thee, another boundless space. In this infinity then what is the difference between him who lives three days and him who lives three generations?
Cite this passage
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.50, tr. George Long (1862)
https://whatwouldstoicsdo.com/passage/meditations/4.50
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, tr. George Long (1862). Text: Standard Ebooks (CC0). Sources and licences
In plain English
AI-written notesA blunt exercise for losing the fear of death is to look at people who clung to life: they ended up in the same tomb as those who died young. The span between birth and death is short, and measured against endless time before and after, living three days or three generations makes little difference.
Older wording
- “tenaciously”
- — stubbornly, refusing to let go
- “contempt of death”
- — refusing to be afraid of death
Themes and situations
- Death and mortality
- Time and the present
- Fear and anxiety
- Change and impermanence
- Fear of death