Nature also reclaimed my beloved son Marcus Annius Verus, not long before my brother Lucius died. I gave him the name I bore myself as a child, passed down through generations in my family. My little Marcus bled to death on the doctor’s table while they were removing a tumor from beneath his ear. I could only mourn him five days before I had to leave Rome for the war in Pannonia. Later, gentle Apollonius would remind me of a saying from Epictetus: “Only a madman seeks figs in winter.” Such is one who pines for his child when his loan has been returned to Nature. I loved them, by all means, but learned also to accept that they were mortal.
Leaves that the wind scatters to the ground,
Such are the generations of men.2
And what were my children but such leaves? They arrived with the spring and were brought down by the winter blast; then others grew to take their place. I wanted to keep them forever, although I always knew that they were mortal. Yet the heart that cries “Oh let my child be safe!” is like an eye wanting only to gaze on pleasant sights, refusing to accept that all things change, whether we like it or not.
The wise man sees life and death as two sides of the same coin. When Xenophon, one of Socrates’s noblest students, received word that his son had fallen in battle, what did he say? “I knew my son was mortal.” He grasped so firmly the precept that what is born must surely also perish. I had evidence of this from an early age, having lost my father, Annius Verus, when I was just a child. I barely knew him, except through his reputation as a good and humble man. My mother, Lucilla, buried him, and in due course it fell to me to bury her. The Emperor Antoninus, my adoptive father, buried his empress, and then the time came for Lucius and me, his sons, to place him in his tomb and mourn for him. Then my brother the Emperor Lucius died quite unexpectedly, and I buried him too. Finally, I laid to rest my own beloved empress, Faustina. Soon I shall be reunited with her when Commodus lays my remains in Hadrian’s great mausoleum on the banks of the Tiber. My friends will deliver eulogies for me in Rome and remind the people that Marcus Aurelius has not been lost but only returned to Nature. The sun sets this evening and takes me down with it; tomorrow it will be another who rises to take my place.
So now you’re finally here, Death, my old friend, for assuredly I can call you a friend. You’ve been my guest many times, after all, welcomed through the gates of my imagination. How often have you accompanied me as I pictured the reigns of emperors from long ago while deep in my meditations? Everything is different, but underneath it’s all the same: anonymous individuals marrying, raising children, falling sick, and dying. Some fight wars, feast, work the land, and trade their wares. Some flatter others or seek to be flattered, suspect their fellows of plotting against them, or hatch their own plots. Countless among them engage in intrigues, pray for the death of others, grumble at their lot, fall in love, pile up fortunes, or dream of high office or even a crown. How many individuals whose names we’ll never know, their lives extinguished, lie forgotten, as if they had never been born at all? Yet turn your thoughts to the mighty, and what difference does it make? Death comes knocking at the king’s palace and the beggar’s shack alike. Augustus, the founder of the empire, his family, ancestors, priests, advisors, and his whole entourage—where are they now? Nowhere to be seen. Alexander the Great and his mule driver both reduced to dust, made equals at last by death.
And what of great dynasties, now utterly extinct? Think of the efforts their ancestors took to leave behind an heir, only to have their whole lineage end abruptly with the epitaph “Last of his line” engraved upon some tomb. And how many cities have, as it were, also died? Entire nations wiped out from history. Asked why he wasn’t rejoicing at the annihilation of Carthage, great Scipio wept and prophesied that one day even Rome herself will fall. Every era of history teaches us the same lesson: nothing lasts forever. From the court of Alexander, long gone, to those of Hadrian and Antoninus, among whom I once walked, known today through monuments and stories only. The very names “Hadrian” and “Antoninus” have acquired an archaic ring, like the names of Scipio Africanus and Cato of Utica inscribed in history books. Tomorrow my own name will sound old to others, describing a bygone era: “the reign of Marcus Aurelius.”
I will be joining them: Augustus, Vespasian, Trajan, and the rest. Yet it is a thing indifferent to me how or even whether I shall be remembered. How many of those whose praises were once sung have long since been forgotten? And those who sang their praises too. It’s vanity to worry about how history will record your actions. Even now, I’m surrounded by people who are overly concerned with what future generations will think of them. They might as well lament the fact that centuries ago, before their birth, their names were utterly unknown. The lips of mankind can grant you neither fame nor glory worth seeking. What matters is how I face this moment, which shall soon be gone, for I can already feel my very self evaporating, slipping gradually into extinction as if into a dream.
Death, when I rode in triumph through the streets of Rome alongside Lucius, were you with me then? The slaves stood with us in the chariots, holding golden wreaths above our heads, whispering at our backs “remember you must die.” Even as Lucius paraded his haul of gold and treasures and shackled lines of captured Parthians, his legionaries were bringing back something far more sinister from the east: the pestilence that followed them to Rome. It’s taken fourteen years, but the disease that saw Roman dead piled high on carts has finally claimed another Caesar. The Stoics taught me to look death square in the eye, to tell myself with merciless honesty each day “I am a mortal,” all the while remaining in good cheer. They say that when Zeno, the founder of our school, was elderly, he once tripped and fell. He banged on the ground and quipped: “I come of my own accord; why then do you call me?” Now I too am an old man, and, though you call me, I come readily to meet you, Death.
Yet there are still many afraid even to utter your name aloud. The Stoics taught me that there are no such words of ill omen. Socrates was the first to call the idea that death is terrible a mask to frighten small children. He said, “Friends, if a childish part of you is still afraid of death, you should sing a charm over him every day until he’s cured.” If I consider death for what it is, analyzing it rationally, stripping away all the assumptions encrusted round it, it’s revealed to be nothing but a process of Nature. Look at what is behind the mask, study it, and you will see it does not bite. Yet this childish fear of death is perhaps our greatest bane in life. Fear of death does us more harm than death itself because it turns us into cowards, whereas death merely returns us to Nature. The wise and good enjoy life, without a doubt, but nevertheless are unafraid of dying. Surely we are never fully alive as long as we fear the end? Indeed, to learn how to die is to unlearn how to be a slave.
I must die, but must I die groaning? For it’s not death that upsets us but our judgments about it. Socrates did not fear death; he saw that it was neither good nor bad. On the morning of his execution, he casually informed his friends that philosophy is a lifelong meditation on our own mortality. True philosophers, he said, fear their own demise least of all men. For those who love wisdom above everything else are continually in training for the end. To practice death in advance is to practice freedom and to prepare oneself to let go of life gracefully.