A good death. Seneca, Epistles 2.13.14-15

In the end, we must all face death, the last fear. There is no avoiding or solving it, for Seneca. The way beyond its power is through it. Instead of encouraging avoidance, he admonishes us to face it.


Pudet me ibi sic () tecum loqui et tam lenibus te remediis focilare. Alius dicat fortasse non veniet: tu dic quid porro, si veniet? videbimus uter vincat; fortasse pro me venit, et mors ista vitam honestabit. Cicuta magnum Socratem fecit. Catoni gladium assertorem libertatis extorque: magnam partem detraxeris gloriae. Nimium diu te cohortor, cum tibi admonitione magis quam exhortatione opus sit. Non in diversum te a natura tua ducimus: natus es ad ista quae dicimus; eo magis bonum tuum auge et exorna.


I am ashamed to speak with you about such serious problems and offer only meager solutions. Another fellow might tell you, "It is possible that the worst won't come." You tell him, "But what if it does? We shall then see who conquers, death or myself. Perhaps my time has come, and death shall put an honorable end to my life here and now." Hemlock made Socrates great. Take from Cato the sword that set him free, and you shall remove a great part of his glory (). I am wasting your time with exhortation, when what we really need is admonition. We are not leading you toward a fate out of keeping with your nature: you were born to the troubles we discuss. Whatever is good in your part of them, make it greater, and more beautiful.


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() Capps replaces the MSS reading ibi sic with et triste, but I prefer to take the ibi as referring generally to fear and specifically to Lucilius' letter(s) to Seneca, which presumably discuss fear and other matters.

() Socrates was convicted of impiety (ἀσέβεια) and corrupting the youth in 399 BCE. The Athenians condemned him to death, with the possibility of exile. He chose death, and perished after drinking a lethal dose of hemlock. Cato the Younger committed suicide in 46 BCE, after Julius Caesar defeated his ally Metellus Scipio in the battle of Thapsus. Caesar wanted to spare Cato and the other defeated republicans, but his soldiers had no mercy on the troops of Scipio, and Cato had none for himself. Both he and Socrates were remembered in Seneca's time as examples of noble, honorable death.