Vitae philosophorum

For life has no terrors for him who has thoroughly apprehended that there are no terrors for him in ceasing to live. Foolish, therefore, is the man who says that he fears death, not because it will pain when it comes, but because it pains in the prospect. Whatsoever causes no annoyance when it is present, causes only a groundless pain in the expectation. Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not. It is nothing, then, either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it is not and the dead exist no longer.[*](The striking resemblance to this passage of ps.-Plat. Axiochus, 369 b, has often been pointed out, most recently by E. Chevallier, Etude crit. du dialogue ps.-plat. l’Axiochos (Lyon, 1914, pp. 74 sq.); he rightly maintains the priority of the letter to Menoeceus (ib. p. 76).) But in the world, at one time men shun death as the greatest of all evils, and at another time choose it as a respite from the evils in life.