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50It is a vulgar, but still a useful help towards contempt of death, to pass in review those who have tenaciously stuck to life. What more then have they gained than those who have died early? Certainly they lie in their tombs somewhere at last, Cadicianus, Fabius, Julianus, Lepidus, or any one else like them, who have carried out many to be buried and then were carried out themselves. Altogether the interval is small [between birth and death]; and consider with how much trouble, and in company with what sort of people and in what a feeble body this interval is laboriously passed. Do not then consider life a thing of any value. For look to the immensity of time behind thee, and to the time which is before thee, another boundless space. In this infinity then what is the difference between him who lives three days and him who lives three generations?[24]
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Notes
[24] An allusion to Homer's Nestor who was living at the war of Troy among the third generation, like old Parr with his hundred and fifty-two years, and some others in modern times who have beaten Parr by twenty or thirty years; and yet they died at last. The word is τριγερηνίου in Antoninus. Nestor is named τριγέρων by some writers; but here perhaps there is an allusion to Homer's Γερῄνος ἱππότα Νεστωα.