Meditations IV.41

Thou art a little soul bearing up a corpse, as Epictetus said.⁶⁸

• 68.Not now found in his works. Swinburne has “A little soul for a little bears up this corpse which is man” (Hymn to Proserpine). Compare Ignatius’s Letter to the Smyrnaeans 5: νεκροφόρος.

  Modern editions of Epictetus print the line among his fragments on the strength of this passage. Swinburne’s “Hymn to Proserpine” was published in 1866. Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, wrote a series of letters to churches while being taken to Rome for execution in the early 2nd century; his word is nekrophoros, “corpse-bearer.”