Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

48 MARCUS ANTONINUS BOOK
or at most the day after, you would be dead, you
would not be greatly exercised whether it were
the day after rather than to-morrow, not if you
have a spark of spirit for what difference is
there worth considering? So, too, never mind
whether it is ever so many years hence, or to-
morrow.
48 Constantly realise how many physicians are
dead, who have often enough knit their brows over
their patients ; how many astrologers, who have
pompously predicted others' deaths ; philosophers,
who have held disquisitions without end on death
or immortality ; mighty men, who have slain their
thousands ; tyrants, who in exercise of their pre-
rogative of death have blustered as though they
were Immortals ;
whole cities buried bodily, Helice,
Pompeii, Herculaneum, and others without end.
Then count up those whom you have known, one
by one ; how one buried another, was in his turn
laid low, and another buried him ; and all this in a
little span ! In a word, look at all human things,
behold how fleeting and how sorry
but yesterday
a mucus-clot, to-morrow dust or ashes ! Spend
your brief moment then according to nature's law,
and serenely greet the journey's end, as an olive