As a Ripe Olive Falls
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Ἐννοεῖν συνεχῶς πόσοι μὲν ἰατροὶ ἀποτεθνήκασι, πολλάκις τὰς ὀφρῦς ὑπὲρ τῶν ἀρρώστων συσπάσαντες· πόσοι δὲ μαθηματικοί, ἄλλων θανάτους ὥς τι μέγα προειπόντες· πόσοι δὲ φιλόσοφοι, περὶ θανάτου ἢ ἀθανασίας μυρία διατεινάμενοι· πόσοι δὲ ἀριστεῖς, πολλοὺς ἀποκτείναντες· πόσοι δὲ τύραννοι, ἐξουσίᾳ ψυχῶν μετὰ δεινοῦ φρυάγματος ὡς ἀθάνατοι κεχρημένοι· πόσαι δὲ πόλεις ὅλαι, ἵν’ οὕτως εἴπω, τεθνήκασιν, Ἑλίκη καὶ Πομπήιοι καὶ Ἡρκλᾶνον καὶ ἄλλαι ἀναρίθμητοι. ἔπιθι δὲ καὶ ὅσους οἶδας, ἄλλον ἐπ’ ἄλλῳ· ὁ μὲν τοῦτον κηδεύσας εἶτα ἐξετάθη, ὁ δὲ ἐκεῖνον, πάντα δὲ ἐν βραχεῖ. τὸ γὰρ ὅλον, κατιδεῖν ἀεὶ τὰ ἀνθρώπινα ὡς ἐφήμερα καὶ εὐτελῆ καὶ ἐχθὲς μὲν μυξάριον, αὔριον δὲ τάριχος ἢ τέφρα. τὸ ἀκαριαῖον οὖν τοῦτο τοῦ χρόνου κατὰ φύσιν διελθεῖν καὶ ἵλεων καταλῦσαι, ὡς ἂν εἰ ἐλαία πέπειρος γενομένη ἔπιπτεν, εὐφημοῦσα τὴν ἐνεγκοῦσαν καὶ χάριν εἰδυῖα τῷ φύσαντι δένδρῳ.
Consider continually how many physicians have died, after often knitting their brows over the sick; how many astrologers, having foretold others’ deaths as some great matter; how many philosophers, having argued endlessly about death or immortality; how many warriors, having killed many; how many tyrants, having wielded power over men’s lives with terrible arrogance, as if they were immortal; how many whole cities have, so to speak, died — Helike, Pompeii, Herculaneum, and others beyond counting. Go over, too, all those you have known yourself, one after another: one buried this man and then was laid out himself, another that one — and all in a short while. For, in sum: look always upon human things as fleeting and cheap — yesterday a drop of mucus, tomorrow a mummy or ashes. So pass through this momentary span of time in accordance with nature, and lay it down graciously, as a ripe olive might fall, blessing the earth that bore it and grateful to the tree that grew it.
A long roll-call of the dead — physicians, astrologers, philosophers, warriors, tyrants, even whole cities (Helike, Pompeii, Herculaneum) — and all one’s own acquaintances, gone in a moment. Human things are fleeting and cheap; so pass your instant of time by nature and die serenely, as a ripe olive drops, blessing the tree that bore it.
Marcus builds a long, deliberately unglamorous catalogue of the dead, and its structure carries the argument. He picks precisely those who traded on death or seemed to master it: physicians who frowned professionally over the dying, astrologers who solemnly predicted others’ ends, philosophers who spun endless theories "about death or immortality," warriors who dealt out death, tyrants who held the power of life and death "as if they were immortal" (ὡς ἀθάνατοι) — every one of them now dead himself. The presumption of standing above death is answered by the flat fact that all of them succumbed to it. He then widens the frame past individuals to whole cities: Helike, swallowed by the sea; Pompeii and Herculaneum, buried by Vesuvius within cultural memory — even a city, that seeming-permanent thing, "dies." And nearest of all, the acquaintances he has personally watched go, one mourner soon becoming the mourned, "all in a short while."
Out of this piled-up mortality he draws first a deflation and then, remarkably, a consolation. The deflation: see τὰ ἀνθρώπινα, human affairs, as ἐφήμερα καὶ εὐτελῆ, fleeting and cheap, and see the body’s span between its crude beginning and end — "yesterday a smear of mucus, tomorrow a mummy or ash." But the chapter does not end in disgust; it ends in one of the most beautiful images Marcus ever wrote. Since your allotted time is ἀκαριαῖον, an instant, pass through it κατὰ φύσιν, in accordance with nature, and then καταλῦσαι ἵλεων — "lay it down graciously," die with a good grace — ὡς ἂν εἰ ἐλαία πέπειρος γενομένη ἔπιπτεν: as a ripe olive falls of itself, "blessing the earth that bore it and thankful to the tree that grew it." Death, met at the right moment and in the right spirit, is not a violence done to the fruit but its natural completion, and the fruit’s last act is gratitude. The whole meditation on mortality resolves into a picture of ripeness: to die well is to fall when ripe, with a blessing on one’s lips for the life that produced you.
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Meditations 4.48 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/meditations-greek/4.48/