FACING DEATH

Aurelius Marcus, believed by many to be the wisest and most tolerant emperor of Rome wrote the following about facing death:

You have embarked, you have made the voyage, you have come to the shore: get out.

You have existed as a part. You shall disappear in that which produced you; or rather, you shall be received back into its seminal principle by transmutation.

Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and end your journey in content, just as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew.

Every part of me will be reduced by change into some part of the universe, and that again will change into another part of the universe, and so on forever.

And by consequence of such a change I too exist, and those who begot me, and so on forever in the other direction.

- Aurelius Marcus