Marcus Aurelius Antoninus to Himself - College of Stoic Philosophers

50 MARCUS ANTONINUS BOOK iv
50 A simple, yet effectual, help towards disregard
of death, is to dwell on those who have clung
tenaciously to life. What have they got by it,
more than those taken in their prime ? Some-
where, somewhen, in any case they lie low, Cadici-
anus, Fabius, Julianus, Lepidus, and the rest who,
however many they first carried to the grave, came
thither themselves at last. And how slight the
difference after all, how much afflicted, how ill-
companioned, and in how poor a body !
It is
as nothing, compared with the unfathomable past
and the infinite beyond.
In the presence of that,
is not *
Trigerenian Nestor ' 1
as the three days'
babe?
51 Ever run the short way :
and the short way is
the way of nature, aiming at perfect soundness in
every word and every act. Such is the rule that
gives deliverance from worry and irresolution and
all secondary aims and artifice.
1 *
M. plays upon the familiar epithet Gerenian '
of Nestor, the
typical ancient of Greek '
literature, and Trigeron (rpiytywv) thrice-
aged/ an epithet applied to Nestor by the Greek epigrammatists.