Meditations III.8

In the mind of the man that has been chastened and thoroughly cleansed thou wilt find no foul abscess or gangrene or hidden sore. Nor is his life cut short, when the day of destiny overtakes him, as we might say of a tragedian’s part, who leaves the stage before finishing his speech and playing out the piece.²² Furthermore there is nothing there slavish or affected, no dependence on others or severance from them,²³ no sense of accountability or skulking to avoid it.

• 22.xii. 36; Seneca’s Epistles 77.

  Seneca’s seventy-seventh letter, written after the suicide of his friend Tullius Marcellinus, closes by comparing life to a play: what matters is not how long it is but how well it is acted.

• 23.See viii. 34.