Why do you not rather gather up your brief life and render it a peaceful one to yourself and all others? Why do you not rather make yourself beloved by all while you live, and regretted by all when you die? Why do you long to drag down the man who deals with you from too lofty a height? Why do you try with all your might to crush the man who rails against you, a low and contemptible fellow, but sharp-tongued and troublesome to his betters? Why are you angry with your slave, you with your master, you with your patron, you with your client? Wait a little. Behold, death comes, who will make you equals. At the morning performances in the arena we often see a battle between a bull and a bear tied together, and when they have harried each other, an appointed slayer awaits them. Their fate is ours; we harass someone bound closely to us, and yet the end, all too soon, threatens the victor and the vanquished. Rather let us spend the little time that is left in repose and peace! Let no man loathe us when we lie a corpse! A cry of fire in the neighborhood often ends a fight, and the arrival of a wild beast rescues a traveler from the brigand. We have no time to struggle with lesser ills when a more threatening fear appears. Why do we concern ourselves with combat and with snares? Can you wish for the victim of your wrath a greater ill than death? Even though you do not move a finger, he will die. You waste your pains if you wish to do what needs must be. “I do not wish,” you say, “to kill him at all, but to punish him with exile, with public disgrace, with material loss.” But I am more indulgent to the man who would give his enemy a wound than to the one who would give him a blister; for the latter has not only an evil mind, but a petty mind as well. Whether your thoughts run on tortures severe or slight, how short is the time in which either your victim can writhe under your torments, or you derive a wicked joy from another’s pain! Soon shall we spew forth this frail spirit. Meanwhile, so long as we draw breath, so long as we live among men, let us cherish humanity. Let us not cause fear to any man, nor danger; let us scorn losses, wrongs, abuse, and taunts, and let us endure with heroic mind our short-lived ills. While we are looking back, as they say, and turning around, straightway death will be upon us.