My Virtual Reading Room

"Must I, then, be the only one to be beheaded now?" Why, did you want everybody else to be beheaded for your consolation?
........
"What aid, then, must we have ready at hand in such circumstances?" Why, what else than the knowledge of what is mine, and what is not mine, and what is permitted me, and what is not permitted me? I must die; must I, then, die groaning, too? I must be fettered: and wailing too? I must go into exile: does anyone, then, keep you from going with a smile and cheerful and serene? "Tell your secrets." I say not a word; for that is under my control. "But I will fetter you." What is that you say, man? fetter me? My leg you will fetter, but my moral purpose not even Zeus himself has power to overcome. "I will throw you into prison." My paltry body, rather! "I will behead you." Well, when did I ever tell you that mine was the only neck that could not be severed? These are the lessons that philosophers ought to rehearse, these they ought to write down daily, in these they ought to exercise themselves.

Thrasea used to say: "I would rather be killed to-day than banished to-morrow." What, then, did Rufus say to him? "If you choose death as the heavier of the two misfortunes, what folly of choice! But if as the lighter, who has given you the choice? Are you not willing to practice contentment with what has been given you?"

Wherefore, what was it Agrippinus used to remark? "I am not standing in my own way." Word was brought him, "Your case is being tried in the Senate." --"Good luck betide! But it is the fifth hour now" (he was in the habit of taking his exercise and then a cold bath at that hour); "let us be off and take our exercise." After he had finished his exercise someone came and told him, "You have been condemned." --"To exile," says he, "or to death?"--"To exile."--"What about my property?"--"It has not been confiscated."--"Well then, let us go to Aricia and take our lunch there."

This is what it means to have rehearsed the lessons one ought to rehearse, to have set desire and aversion free from every hindrance and made them proof against chance. I must die. If forthwith, I die; and if a little later, I will take lunch now, since the hour for lunch has come, and afterwards I will die at the appointed time. How? As becomes a man who is giving back that which was another's.