There’s this one bit of advice about not fearing death from some Latin author:
“Cur non ut plenus vitae conviva recedis aequo animoque capis securam, stulte, quietem?”
There’s an opposite sentiment expressed in a quotation by some author (I was thinking it was Cicero) that goes like this paraphrased in English: “I’m not so much worried/fearful about dying as I am about the eons in the future after I’m gone that I will not be present for, that I will miss seeing”. I’ve been trying and trying to rediscover the original Latin for which this is a very loose paraphrase. Can anyone here think of the original quotation I’m thinking of?
“Cur non ut plenus vitae conviva recedis aequo animoque capis securam, stulte, quietem?”
This quote is by Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Book III, 938-939
Lucretius was an Epicurean, so his belief would be that there is no such thing as immortality and he would have rejected the idea of an afterlife, but he would not have feared death.
Cicero believed in the afterlife. But he did hedge his bets-in de Senectute, he says that if there isn’t an afterlife, then he won’t have to listen to the jeers of people telling him he was wrong!
“quod si in hoc erro, qui animos hominum immortalis esse credam, libenter erro nec mihi hunc errorem, quo delector, dum vivo, extorqueri volo; sin mortuus, ut quidam minuti philosophi censent, nihil sentiam, non vereor ne hunc errorem meum philosophi mortui irrideant.”
The main concern the author had was that death was probably the END of his consciousness, soul, whatever, and because of that he would be left behind as a non-entity while the world marched along without him. And I must confess, I believe the same thing and have the same concern.
I FOUND IT!! Or at least I think I have. I’m not sure because Aetos said Cicero believed in the afterlife.
In Allen and Greenough there is a section (547) on temporal cum. He quotes from Cicero’s Letters to Atticus (Att. xii. 18):
quae res forsitan sit refricatura vulnus meum. sed iam quasi voto quodam et promisso me teneri puto, longumque illud tempus cum non ero magis me movet quam hoc exiguum, quod mihi tamen nimium longum videtur: which I found translated as “and I am more concerned about the long ages, when I shall not be here, than about my short day, which, short though it is, seems all too long to me.” By “exiguum” he seems to mean his short space of time of life, but perhaps I’m not understanding the context.
So it seems like one man is saying why fear death because you will be eternally sleeping and Cicero seems to be saying he’s concerned about all the stuff he’s going to miss out seeing/doing after he is no more.
I think one of the motivators for Cicero’s belief in the afterlife was that his daughter had died before him. This belief offered him the consolation of being reunited with her after death. The quote from De Senectute is actually uttered by Cato Major, so in effect, Cicero is ‘putting words in his mouth’, but it does reflect Cicero’s personal belief. He was dead set against the Epicureans. Cato, being a Stoic, was much more to his liking.
Here’s another translation of those lines from the letter to Atticus (from Loeb 97, trans. D.R. Shackleton Bailey):
quae res forsitan sit refricatura vulnus meum. sed iam quasi voto quodam et promisso me teneri puto, longumque illud tempus cum non ero magis me movet quam hoc exiguum, quod mihi tamen nimium longum videtur. habeo enim nihil temptatis rebus omnibus in quo acquiescam.
“Perhaps that will gall my wound. But I consider myself as virtually bound by a vow and pledge, and the long expanse of time after I shall cease to be is of more account to me than this little span, which yet seems to me too long. I have tried everything and found no comfort.”
Read this way, I think what Cicero is saying is that he can hardly wait to get to heaven. What he’s referring to in the letter is the building of a memorial for Tullia, his daughter. Of course, Romans were also very concerned with how well and how long they would be remembered, but in this case, I think Cicero is responding to Tullia’s death and his desire to be with her.
So I guess you’re saying that the “non ero” in “longumque illud tempus cum non ero” does not mean that he will not exist in any fashion, but that he will not exist as a living, breathing, not-dead human being? Because “non ero” to me seems to refer to non-existence (in any form). However, what you said makes perfect sense. I’m just surprised that “non ero” could apply only to part of his existence, namely, his HUMAN existence.
