I am reading Seneca’s De clementia in the Loeb edition and I came across this quotation:
Ἐμοῦ θανόντος γαῖα μιχθήτω πυρί·
ούδὲν μέλει μοι· τἀμὰ γὰρ καλῶς ἔχει.
I am trying to understand it. Here is my attempt:
“If I am dying, let the earth be mingled with fire;
It does not matter to me at all, for what belongs to me is well.”
I would be most grateful if some kind member could shed some light on this verse.
πυρί and μοι are complete words, and have no letters elided. Instead of πυρί᾽ and μοι᾽, it should be “πυρί·” and “μοι·”.
θανόντος is aorist, so dead, not dying.
I agree that μέλει is impersonal with adverbial οὐδέν, “it matters to me not at all”, but personal μέλει is possible as well: “not a thing matters to me”.
τἀμὰ is plural in conception, whether or not you bring that out in translation.
My trans: “When I’m gone, burn it down. Don’t matter me to me nohow, since my junk’s all right.”
I suspect that γαῖα refers to the element, ie. his corpse, and that he’s distinguishing this from his actual possessions, soul or self or whatever. I assume he imagines these to abide past death, but perhaps he considers them to be bounded and ceasing to exist with his natural term of life. In that second conception of the self as mortal, καλῶς ἔχει might express the fact that any events after death do not affect it.
Thank you Joel. I meant to type the high dot, not an apostrophe. I think I’ve fixed it now. I could kick myself for not recognizing the aorist.