{"id":980,"date":"2018-03-16T15:11:06","date_gmt":"2018-03-16T14:11:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.flockofideas.com\/?p=980"},"modified":"2018-04-02T18:09:48","modified_gmt":"2018-04-02T16:09:48","slug":"marcus-aurelius-about-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.flockofideas.com\/index.php\/2018\/03\/16\/marcus-aurelius-about-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Marcus Aurelius on the Topic of Death"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD) belongs to those few people who have left a unique treasure of wisdom for their posterity. He was one of the great Stoic philosophers and humanists, and currently my favorite &#8220;tutor&#8221; \u2013 day and night. If you&#8217;re interested in the ideas of Stoicism, I can highly recommend the insightful and instructive mailings of the &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/dailystoic.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Daily Stoic<\/a>&#8220;.<\/p>\n<p>Now, even though Marcus Aurelius&#8217; last words, at least in his personal diary &#8220;Meditationes&#8221;, deal with the theme of death, they are first and foremost an ode to the beauty of life really.<\/p>\n<p>Here you go:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<pre>You\u2019ve lived as a citizen in a great city. Five years or a hundred\r\n\u2013 what\u2019s the difference? The laws make no distinction.\r\n\r\nAnd to be sent away from it, not by a tyrant or a dishonest judge, but by Nature, who first invited you in \u2013 why is that so terrible?\r\n\r\nLike the impresario ringing down the curtain on an actor:\r\n\r\n\u201cBut I\u2019ve only gotten through three acts ...!\u201d\r\n\r\nYes. This will be a drama in three acts, the length fixed by the power that directed your creation, and now directs your dissolution. Neither was yours to determine.\r\n\r\nSo make your exit with grace \u2014 the same grace shown to you.<\/pre>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>*sigh*<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD) belongs to those few people who have left a unique treasure of wisdom for their posterity. He was one of the great Stoic philosophers and humanists, and currently my favorite &#8220;tutor&#8221; \u2013 day and night. If you&#8217;re interested in the ideas of Stoicism, I can highly recommend the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":981,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,183,53],"tags":[261,21,259,262,260,163],"class_list":["post-980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","category-philosophy","category-poem","tag-death","tag-life","tag-marcus-aurelius","tag-rome","tag-stoa","tag-stoicism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flockofideas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flockofideas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flockofideas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flockofideas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flockofideas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=980"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.flockofideas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1028,"href":"https:\/\/www.flockofideas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/980\/revisions\/1028"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flockofideas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.flockofideas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flockofideas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.flockofideas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}