Life & Death. Marcus Aurelius 4.50
Marcus
reflects on the brevity of our mortal lives. Seeing events in proper
perspective, as tiny moments in a lifespan dwarfed by the enormity of
the universe, allows us to avoid becoming too emotionally committed
to them, too angry or sad when they appear averse to us. The things
that drive us toward emotional investment and passionate display
(life) will eventually push us toward divestment and apathy (death).
ὁδός ἄνω κάτω μία καὶ ὡυτή.
Ἰδιωτικὸν
μέν, ὅμως δὲ ἀνυστικὸν βοήθημα πρὸς
θανάτου καταφρόνησιν ἡ ἀναπόλησις τῶν
γλίσχρως ἐνδιατριψάντων τῷ ζῆν. τί
οὖν αὐτοῖς πλέον ἢ τοῖς ἀώροις; πάντως
πού ποτε κεῖνται, Καιδικιανός, Φάβιος,
Ἰουλιανός, Λέπιδος ἢ εἴ τις τοιοῦτος,
οἳ πολλοὺς ἐξήνεγκαν, εἶτα ἐξηνέχθησαν·
ὅλον, μικρόν ἐστι τὸ διάστημα καὶ
τοῦτο δι’ ὅσων καὶ μεθ’ οἵων
ἐξαντλούμενον καὶ ἐν οἵῳ σωματίῳ;
μὴ οὖν ὡς πρᾶγμα· βλέπε γὰρ ὀπίσω τὸ
ἀχανὲς τοῦ αἰῶνος καὶ τὸ πρόσω ἄλλο
ἄπειρον. ἐν δὴ τούτῳ τί διαφέρει ὁ
τριήμερος τοῦ τριγερηνίου;
It's
a crazy thing, but repeating the actions required for life past the
moment when they are spent produces an effective will to die, a
contempt for death that makes it almost desirable. What separates
timely attention to life's action from untimely? In the end, the
moment comes when all must give up the ghost to lie down, somewhere.
Caedicianus, Fabius, Julian, Lepidus (†), and others like them: they all carried many corpses
forth in their time, until they were borne away on biers as corpses,
too. The whole period of our lives is just a little moment, isn't it?
A brief interval spent in such trite occupations and company, and in
what a silly little body! In this light, how much more insignificant
each particular event becomes. Look around you! Behind lies the
yawning gulf of eternity, and before another boundless void. In the
midst of such enormities, what matters whether we count three days or
three hundred years? An ancient thrice again as old as Nestor (‡)
looks just as young as a babe newborn.
---
(†)
I am not certain who these figures are, but I have some guesses
(collected from the population of famous Romans who died old). Fabius
might be Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus Cunctator (c. 280-203
BCE), the general and dictator largely responsible for saving Rome
from Hannibal during the second Punic war. Lepidus could be Marcus
Aemilius Lepidus (c. 89-12 BCE), the triumvir whose alliance with
Caesar made him a convenient colleague for Octavian and Mark Antony.
Julian might be Lucius Octavius Cornelius Publius Salvius Julianus
Aemilianus (c. 110-170 CE), a learned jurist who had a distinguished
political career, serving several emperors on the privy council
(consilium principis):
Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius. Caedicianus
is the hardest to guess, but inscriptions attest the political career
(reaching as far as imperial legate to Dacia, and suffect consul at
Rome) and property (pottery factories?) of one Quintus Aburnius
Caedicianus, whom Marcus might have known, as the inscriptions
mentioned put him in the early second century CE (before 150): see RE
s.v. Aburnius §1.
(‡)
The wisest and oldest of the
Greeks in the Iliad,
who offers sage counsel to the heroes besieging Troy. Marcus refers
to him here as the Gerenian, a
title Homer gives him because of his upbringing in the town of Gerenia (also Gerena or
Gerenus) in Messenia.