Cicero (on the Stoics) · 106–43 BCE
Tusculan Disputations 1 ¶105–107 — Cicero (on the Stoics)
From “On the Contempt of Death”
Translation by C. D. Yonge (1853)
Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 1 ¶105–107
A. You have lamented it sufficiently in your book on Consolation, and when I read that, there is nothing which I desire more than to leave these things; but that desire is increased a great deal by what I have just heard. M. The time will come, and that soon, and with equal certainty whether you hang back or press forward; for time flies. But death is so far from being an evil, as it lately appeared to you, that I am inclined to suspect, not that there is no other thing which is an evil to man, but rather that there is nothing else which is a real good to him; if, at least, it is true that we become thereby either Gods ourselves, or companions of the Gods. However, this is not of so much consequence, as there are some of us here who will not allow this. But I will not leave off discussing this point till I have convinced you that death can, upon no consideration whatever, be an evil. A. How can it, after what I now know?
Cite this passage
Cicero (on the Stoics), Tusculan Disputations 1 ¶105–107, tr. C. D. Yonge (1853)
https://whatwouldstoicsdo.com/passage/tusculan-disputations/1.105
Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, tr. C. D. Yonge (1853). Text: Standard Ebooks (CC0). Sources and licences
In plain English
AI-written notesA listener confesses he longs to leave the troubles of life, and the speaker answers that death arrives soon and certainly whether we hang back or rush toward it, since time flies. He goes so far as to suggest that death may be the only real good, and promises to show it is never an evil.
Themes and situations
- Death and mortality
- Time and the present
- Fear of death