Life is a voyage. Marcus Aurelius 3.3
Another meditation on life and death. Mortality is something that we must all encounter, and Marcus is at pains to find that it is not all bad.
Ἱπποκράτης πολλὰς νόσους ἰασάμενος αὐτὸς νοσήσας ἀπέθανεν. οἱ Χαλδαῖοι πολλῶν θανάτους προηγόρευσαν, εἶτα καὶ αὐτοὺς τὸ πεπρωμένον κατέλαβεν. Ἀλέξανδρος καὶ Πομπήιος καὶ Γάιος Καῖσαρ, ὅλας πόλεις ἄρδην τοσαυτάκις ἀνελόντες καὶ ἐν παρατάξει πολλὰς μυριάδας ἱππέων καὶ πεζῶν κατακόψαντες, καὶ αὐτοί ποτε ἐξῆλθον τοῦ βίου. Ἡράκλειτος περὶ τῆς τοῦ κόσμου ἐκπυρώσεως τοσαῦτα φυσιολογήσας, ὕδατος τὰ ἐντὸς πληρωθείς, βολβίτῳ κατακεχρισμένος ἀπέθανε. Δημόκριτον δὲ οἱ φθεῖρες, Σωκράτην δὲ ἄλλοι φθεῖρες ἀπέκτειναν. τί ταῦτα; ἐνέβης, ἔπλευσας, κατήχθης· ἔκβηθι. εἰ μὲν ἐφ̓ ἕτερον βίον, οὐδὲν θεῶν κενὸν οὐδὲ ἐκεῖ· εἰ δὲ ἐν ἀναισθησίᾳ, παύσῃ πόνων καὶ ἡδονῶν ἀνεχόμενος καὶ λατρεύων τοσούτῳ χείρονι τῷ ἀγγείῳ ἤπερ ἐστὶ τὸ ὑπηρετοῦν· τὸ μὲν γὰρ νοῦς καὶ δαίμων, τὸ δὲ γῆ καὶ λύθρος.
Though he cured many illnesses, Hippocrates too fell sick and died (⸸). The Chaldaeans foretold many deaths, and then fate laid them low (⸶). Alexander, Pompey, Gaius Caesar (†): whole cities they wasted, again and again, cutting down so many myriads of cavalry and infantry massed in formation, before they too departed from this life. After deducing the heat-death of the universe from natural principles, Heraclitus also perished, smeared with dung to combat a deadly dropsy (‡). Lice did for Democritus, and Socrates was slain by other small beasts (⁑). What is the meaning of these things? Life is a voyage: you embark, sail, and make land; now you must leave the boat. If the far shore finds you in another life, then it will have no lack of gods to greet you. If it puts you beyond the grasp of consciousness, then you will cease clinging to toils and pleasures, serving the vessel of your existence rather than its captain. The latter is mind and spirit, the former naught but earth and blood.
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(⸸) Hippocrates (c. 460-370 BCE) was a famous Greek physician from the island of Cos. Soranus records that he studied with his father, with the sophist Gorgias of Leontini, and with the philosopher Democritus (Vita Hippocratis 3). His approach to medicine involved watching patients carefully, recording symptoms, and applying remedies in timely fashion⸺with an eye toward the moment of crisis, when the illness would either break or prove deadly. His approach included several notions of human physiology not consonant with modern medicine, such as the theory of humors (which explained various metabolic effects as resulting from lack or excess of blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm). He is often remembered for the physicians' oath associated with his name, which has fragments extant from as early as the third century CE, though the earliest complete text comes from the tenth (folio 64 ex codicibus Urbinatibus graecis bibliothecae Vaticanae); the tenor of this oath was famously rendered into Latin, perhaps by Thomas Sydenham (called the English Hippocrates because of an influential textbook he wrote), as primum non nocere.
(⸶) This West Semitic people (called כשדים in Hebrew) appear to have migrated from the Levant to southern Mesopotamia as early as the 10th century BCE. Once there, they fought wars with the Assyrians and native Babylonians (Akkadians), eventually conquering Babylon and restoring the city to considerable glory under the rule of Nebuchadnezzar II (c. 605-562 BCE). Cyrus the Great ended what remained of the empire of Nebuchadnezzar when he deposed Nabonidus and his son Belshazzar, in 539 BCE, but the Chaldaeans persisted, and retained fame for astrology throughout antiquity.
(†) Alexander the Great, Pompey the Great, and Gaius Julius Caesar: three military commanders renowned for hard-fought victories.
(‡) Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. 535-475 BCE), an ancient philosopher famous for cryptic aphorisms deposited in a book in the local temple of Artemis. Marcus repeats here the legend of Heraclitus' death reported by Diogenes Laertius (9.3-4), who has the philosopher burying himself in dung to draw out excess water accumulated in his body as the result of an attempt to live off herbs and weeds in the mountains, whither he had fled to escape the evils of human civilization. He conceived the world as a material expression of fire, changing over time in cycles punctuated by total conflagration. Some Stoics, notably Chrysippus (cf. Plutarch, De Stoicorum repugnantiis 1053b-c), accepted and adapted this idea to their own notions of natural history.
(⁑) Democritus of Abdera (c. 460-370 BCE) was another philosopher, known for travelling widely and writing extensively about the theory that the world is composed of atoms and void. Marcus is the only source I know for the legend that lice killed him. Other sources record that he died of self-imposed starvation, which he prolonged by sniffing bread or honey (cf. Asclepiades of Bithynia in Supplementum Aristotelicum 3; Caelius Aurelius, De acutis morbis 2.37; Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 2.26 Kaibel). Marcus calls the Athenians who killed Socrates lice.