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[84]
For what
advantage has life—or, rather, what trouble does it
not have? But even grant that it has great
advantage, yet undoubtedly it has either satiety or
an end. I do not mean to complain of life as many
men, and they learned ones, have often done; nor
do I regret that I have lived, since I have so lived
[p. 97]
that I think I was not born in vain, and I quit life
as if it were an inn, not a home. For Nature has
given us an hostelry in which to sojourn, not to abide.
O glorious day, when I shall set out to join the
assembled hosts of souls divine and leave this world
of strife and sin! For I shall go to meet not only
the men already mentioned, but my Cato, too,
than whom no better man, none more distinguished
for filial duty, was ever born. His body was burned
by me, whereas, on the contrary it were more
fitting that mine had been burned by him; but
his soul, not deserting me, but ever looking back,
has surely departed for that realm where it knew
that I, myself, must come. People think that I
have bravely borne my loss—not that I bore it
with an untroubled heart, but I found constant
solace in the thought that our separation would
not be long.
Cicero: De Senectute De Amicitia De Divinatione. With An English Translation. William Armistead Falconer. Cambridge. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, Mass., London, England. 1923.
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