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About death: whether it is a dispersion, or a reso- lution into atoms, or annihilation, it is either extinction or change. 33. About pain: the pain which is intolerable carries us off; but that which lasts a long time is tolerable; and the mind maintains its own tranquillity by retiring into itself, and the ruling faculty is not made worse.

But the parts which are harmed by pain, let them, if they can, give their opinion about it. 34. About fame: look at the minds [of those who seek fame], observe what they are, and what kind of things they avoid, and what kind of things they pursue.

And consider that as the heaps of sand piled on one another hide the former sands, so in life the events which go before are soon covered by those which come after. 45. From Plato: the man who has an elevated mind and takes a view of all time and of all substance, dost thou sup- pose it possible for him to think that human life is anything great?

It is not possible, he said. Such a man then will think that death also is no evil. Certainly not. 36. From Antisthenes: It is royal to do good and to be abused. 37. It is a base thing for the countenance to be obedient and to regulate and compose itself as the mind commands, and for the mind not to be regulated and composed by itself. 38.

It is not right to vex ourselves at things, For they care nought about it. 39. To the immortal gods and us give joy. 40. Life must be reaped like the ripe ears of corn; One man is born; another dies. A\The end of this section is unintelligible.

THE MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS AURELIUS 251 41. If gods care not for me and for my children, There is a reason for it. 42. For the good is with me, and the just. 43. No joining others in their wailing, no violent emotion. 44. From Plato: But I would make this man a sufficient answer, which is this: Thou sayest not well, if thou think- est that a man who is good for anything at all ought to com- pute the hazard of life or death, and should not rather look to this only in all that he does, whether he is doing what is just or unjust, and the works of a good or a bad man. 45.

For thus it is, men of Athens, in truth; wherever a man has placed himself thinking it the best place for him, or has been placed by a commander, there in my opinion he ought to stay and to abide the hazard, taking nothing into the reckoning, either death or anything else, before the base- ness [of deserting his post]. 46.

But, my good friend, reflect whether that which is noble and good is not something different from saving and being saved; for as to a man living such or such a time, at least one who is really a man, consider if this is not a thing to be dismissed from the thoughts: and there must be no love of life: but as to these matters a man must intrust them to the deity and believe what the women say, that no man can escape his destiny, the next inquiry being how he may best live the time that he has to live. 47.

Look round at the courses of the stars, as if thou wert going along with them; and constantly consider the changes of the elements into one another; for such thoughts purge away the filth of the terrene life. 48. This is a fine saying of Plato: That he who is dis- coursing about men should look also at earthly things as if he viewed them from some higher place; should look at them in their assemblies, armies, agricultural labours, mar- riages, treaties, births, deaths, noise of the courts of justice, desert places, various nations of barbarians, feasts, lamen- tations, markets, a mixture of all things and an orderly com- bination of contraries.

Consider the past; such great changes of political su- premacies. Thou mayest foresee also the things which will be. For they will certainly be of like form, and it is not possible 252 THE MEDITATIONS OF MARCUS AURELIUS that they should deviate from the order of the things which take place now: accordingly to have contemplated human life for forty years is the same as to have contemplated it for ten thousand years, For what more wilt thou see? 50.