he deaths of many, and then fate caught them too.
Alexander and Pompeius, and Caius Caesar, after so often completely
destroying whole cities, and in battle cutting to pieces many ten
thousands of cavalry and infantry, themselves too at last departed from
life. Heraclitus, after so many speculations on the conflagration of the
universe, was filled with water internally and died smeared all over
with mud. And lice destroyed Democritus; and other lice killed Socrates.
What means all this? Thou hast embarked, thou hast made the voyage, thou
art come to shore; get out. If indeed to another life, there is no want
of gods, not even there; but if to a state without sensation, thou wilt
cease to be held by pains and pleasures, and to be a slave to the
vessel, which is as much inferior as that which serves it is superior:+
for the one is intelligence and deity; the other is earth and
corruption.

4. Do not waste the remainder of thy life in thoughts about others, when
thou dost not refer thy thoughts to some object of common utility. For
thou losest the opportunity of doing something else when thou hast such
thoughts as these,--What is such a person doing, and why, and what is he
saying, and what is he thinking of, and what is he contriving, and
whatever else of the kind makes us wander away from the observation of
our own ruling power. We ought then to check in the series of our
thoughts everything that is without a purpose and useless, but most of
all the over-curious feeling and the malignant; and a man should use
himself to think of those things only about which if one should suddenly
ask, What hast thou now in thy thoughts? with perfect openness thou
mightest immediately answer, This or That; so that from thy words it
should be plain that everything in thee is simple and benevolent, and
such as befits a social animal, and one that cares not for thoughts
about pleasure or sensual enjoyments at all, nor has any rivalry or envy
and suspicion, or anything else for which thou wouldst blush if thou
shouldst say that thou hadst it in thy mind. For the man who is such,
and no longer delays being among the number of the best, is like a
priest and minister of the gods, using too the [deity] which is planted
within him, which makes the man uncontaminated by pleasure, unharmed by
any pain, untouched by any insult, feeling no wrong, a fighter in the
noblest fight, one who cannot be overpowered by any passion, dyed deep
with justice, acc