Seneca · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
I saw Aufidius Bassus, an excellent man, shaken, struggling against his age. But now more weighs him down than can be lifted off; old age has settled on him with its full, general weight. You know he always had a weak and sapped constitution; for a long time he held it together, and, to put it more accurately, patched it up: now suddenly it has given out. Just as in a ship that's taking on bilgewater, one leak or another can be plugged, but once it starts opening and giving way in many places at once, nothing can save the leaking vessel — so too in an aging body, weakness can be propped up and supported only up to a point. When, as in a crumbling building, every joint pulls apart, and while you're shoring up one spot another splits open, you have to look around for a way out. Our friend Bassus, though, is cheerful in spirit: this is what philosophy provides — to be joyful in the very sight of death, and, whatever condition the body is in, to be strong and glad and not to fail even while one is failing. A great helmsman sails on even with a torn sail, and if he's lost his rigging, still fits what's left of the ship to keep it on course. This is what our Bassus is doing, and he looks toward his own end with the same calm expression you'd think too unconcerned if he were looking at someone else's. It's a great thing, Lucilius, and one that takes a long time to learn — to go off with an even mind when that inescapable hour draws near. Other kinds of death offer some hope: the illness ends, the fire is put out, the collapsing building sets down those it seemed about to crush; the sea spits out unharmed those it had swallowed, with the same force it used to suck them in; the soldier's sword is called back from the very throat of the man about to die. The one whom old age leads to death has nothing left to hope for; this alone admits no reprieve. No kind of death is gentler for a person — but none is longer either.
Our Bassus seemed to me to be escorting himself to the grave and putting his affairs in order, living as though he had outlived himself, and bearing the loss of himself with wisdom. He talks a great deal about death, and works hard to persuade us that if there's any discomfort or fear in this business, it's the fault of the dying person, not of death itself; that there's no more trouble in the moment of death than there is after it. And it's just as mad to fear something you won't suffer as to fear something you won't feel. Or does anyone actually believe that the very thing through which nothing is felt will itself be felt? "So," he says, "death is so far outside every evil that it's outside every fear of evil." I know all this — it's been said often, and needs saying often — but it never did me as much good when I read it, or heard it said by people who denied there was anything to fear in what they themselves were nowhere near. This man, though, carried the greatest weight with me, because he was speaking about a death close at hand. Let me tell you what I really think: I believe a man who is right at the point of death is braver than one who is merely approaching it. For death, once it draws near, gives even the inexperienced the courage not to avoid the unavoidable — just as a gladiator who has been thoroughly frightened through the whole fight will offer his throat to his opponent and guide the wandering blade to his own body. But that death which is still some way off, though certainly coming, calls for a slow, steady firmness of mind, which is rarer and can be shown only by the wise man. So I listened to him most gladly, as though he were bringing back a verdict on death, showing what its nature is like as if he'd inspected it up close. It would carry more weight with you, I imagine, and more authority, if someone who had come back to life told you from experience that there's nothing bad in death; those who can tell you best what disturbance the approach of death brings are the ones who have stood right beside it, who have seen it coming and taken it in. You can count Bassus among these; he didn't want us to be deceived. He says it's just as foolish to fear death as to fear old age; for just as old age follows youth, so death follows old age. Whoever doesn't want to die didn't want to live either; for life is given on the condition of death — that's where it's headed. To fear it, then, is madness, because certain things are awaited calmly while only uncertain things are feared. Death has a fair and unconquerable claim on everyone: who can complain about being in a condition that everyone shares? And the first mark of fairness is equality. But it's pointless now to plead nature's case, since it never wanted our law to be any different from its own: whatever it has put together, it takes apart, and whatever it takes apart, it puts together again. And truly, if it happens that old age lets someone go gently, not torn suddenly from life but withdrawn from it little by little, oh, how that person ought to thank all the gods, for having been led, satisfied, to the rest that everyone needs, brought there welcome, after being weary. You see some people actually wishing for death, and more eagerly than life is usually begged for. I don't know which group I should think gives us greater courage — those who demand death, or those who wait for it cheerfully and calmly, since the former sometimes comes from a kind of frenzy or sudden fit of indignation, while the latter tranquility comes from settled judgment. Some people come to death in anger: no one has ever received death cheerfully as it approached, except someone who had long since made himself ready for it.
So I confess I went more often than usual to see this man so dear to me, for several reasons — to find out whether I would find him each time still the same, and whether the vigor of his mind was diminishing along with his bodily strength; and it kept growing, the way the joy of chariot drivers is more clearly noticed as they approach the finish on the seventh lap. He would say, following Epicurus's teachings, that he hoped, first, there would be no pain in that last gasp; but even if there were, it would have some comfort in its very brevity, since no pain that is great can also be long. Besides, he'd have this to fall back on even in the very tearing apart of soul from body: if it happened with torment, once that pain was past he could no longer feel pain at all. He had no doubt, moreover, that an old man's soul sits right at the edge of his lips and would need no great force to be torn from the body. "A fire that has taken hold of fuel that keeps feeding it must be put out with water, or sometimes by pulling down what it's burning; but one that's running out of fuel dies down on its own." I listen to all this gladly, my dear Lucilius, not as though it were new, but as though I'd been brought face to face with the reality itself. And what of it? Haven't I watched many people cut their lives short? I have indeed, but those who come to death without hating life, and let it in rather than dragging it toward themselves, carry more weight with me. And he used to say that we feel that particular torment through our own doing, because we panic exactly when we believe death is close by — but who is death not close to? It's ready in every place and at every moment. "But let's consider," he said, "how, whenever some particular cause of dying seems to be approaching, there are so many other causes much closer that we don't fear at all." An enemy was threatening someone with death; indigestion got to him first. If we're willing to distinguish the causes of our fear, we'll find that some are real and others merely seem so. We don't fear death itself, but the thought of death; for we're always exactly the same distance from death itself. So if death is something to be feared, it must be feared always — for what moment is exempt from death?
But I should be careful that you don't come to hate such long letters worse than death itself. So I'll bring this to an end: as for you, so that you may never fear death, think about it always. Farewell.