SENECA - College of Stoic Philosophers

EPISTLE LXXXII.
of Brutus a forthwith base and disgraceful. For this
Brutus, condemned to death, was trying to obtain
postponement he withdrew a moment in order to
;
ease himself; when summoned to die and ordered to
bare his throat, he exclaimed
"
: I will bare my throat,
if only I may live '
What madness it is to run
!
away, when it is impossible to turn back "
! I will
bare my throat, if only I may live '
He came !
'
very
near saying also
"
: even under !
Antony This
fellow deserved indeed to be consigned to \
life
But, as I was going on to remark, you see that
death in itself is neither an evil nor a good Cato
;
experienced death most honourably, Brutus most
basely. Everything, if you add virtue, assumes a
glory which it did not possess before. We speak of
a sunny room, even though the same room is pitchdark
at night. It is the day which fills it with light,
and the night which steals the light away thus it is
;
with the things which we call indifferent and
'
middle, 6 " like riches, strength, beauty, titles, kingship,
and their opposites, -- death, exile, ill-health,
pain, and all such evils, the fear of which upsets us
to a greater or less extent ;
it is the wickedness or
the virtue that bestows the name of good or evil.
An object
is not by its own essence either hot or cold ;
it is heated when thrown into a furnace, and chilled
when dropped into water. Death is honourable when
related to that which is honourable ; by this I mean
*
virtue and a soul that despises the worst hardships.
Furthermore, there are vast distinctions among
'
these qualities which we call middle." For example,
death is not so indifferent as the question
whether your hair should be worn evenly or unevenly.
Death belongs among those things which are not indeed
evils, but still have in them a semblance of evil ;
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