Meditations IX.21

A cessation of activity, a quiescence from impulse and opinion and, as it were, their death, is no evil. Turn now to consider the stages of thy life—childhood, boyhood, manhood, old age—each step in the ladder of change a death. Is there anything terrible here? Pass on now to thy life under thy grandfather, then under thy mother, then under thy father,³⁴ and finding there many other alterations, changes, and cessations, ask thyself: Is there anything terrible here? No, nor any in the ending and quiescence and change of the whole of life.³⁵

• 34.Pius. See on i. 17. § 3.
• 35.Compare Lucian’s On Funerals 15.

  Lucian’s On Funerals is a satire on mourning customs.