Meditations IV.47

Just as, if a God had told thee,⁷⁴ Thou shalt die to-morrow or in any case the day after, thou wouldest no longer count it of any consequence whether it were the day after to-morrow or to-morrow, unless thou art in the last degree mean-spirited,⁷⁵ for how little is the difference!⁷⁶—so also deem it but a trifling thing that thou shouldest die after ever so many years rather than to-morrow.

• 74.Compare the story of Mycerinus (Herodotus ii. 129), and Matthew Arnold’s poem.

  Herodotus tells of Mycerinus, a king of Egypt who, told by an oracle that he had only six years to live, spent his nights in revelry to make them twelve. Matthew Arnold’s poem “Mycerinus” (1849) retells the story.

• 75.Seneca’s Natural Questions ii. 59, about the middle.

  Seneca’s Natural Questions ii. 59 closes the book on lightning by turning to the fear of death.

• 76.Or interval, compare iv. 50.