O ignorant are they of their ills, who do not laud death and look forward to it as the most precious discovery of Nature! Whether it shuts off prosperity, or repels calamity, or terminates the satiety and weariness of the old man, or leads off the youth in the bloom of life while he still hopes for happier things, or calls back the boy before the harsher stages of life are reached, it is to all the end, to many a relief, to some an answer to prayer, and to none does it show more favor than to those to whom it comes before it is asked for! Death frees the slave though his master is unwilling; it lightens the captive’s chains; from the dungeon it leads forth those whom unbridled power49 had forbidden to leave it; to exiles, whose eyes and minds are ever turning to their native land, death shows that it makes no difference beneath whose soil a man may lie. If Fortune has apportioned unjustly the common goods, and has given over one man to another though they were born with equal rights, death levels all things; this it is, after whose coming no one any more does the will of another; this it is, under whose sway no one is aware of his lowly estate; this it is, that lies open to everyone this it is, Marcia, that your father eagerly desired; this it is, I say, that keeps my birth from being a punishment, that keeps me from falling in the face of threatening misfortunes, that makes it possible to keep my soul unharmed and master of itself: I have a last appeal. Yonder I see instruments of torture, not indeed of a single kind, but differently contrived by different peoples; some hang their victims with head toward the ground, some impale their private parts, others stretch out their arms on a fork-shaped gibbet; I see cords, I see scourges, and for each separate limb and each joint there is a separate engine of torture! But I see also Death. There, too, are bloodthirsty enemies and proud fellow-countrymen; but yonder, too, I see Death. Slavery is no hardship when, if a man wearies of the yoke, by a single step he may pass to freedom. O Life, by the favor of Death I hold thee dear!
Think how great a boon a timely death offers, how many have been harmed by living too long! If Gnaeus Pompeius, that glory and stay of the realm, had been carried off by his illness at Naples,50 he would have departed the unchallenged head of the Roman people. But as it was, a very brief extension of time cast him down from his pinnacle. He saw his legions slaughtered before his eyes, and from that battle where the first line was the senate,51 he saw — what a melancholy remnant52 — the commander himself left alive! He saw an Egyptian his executioner, and yielded to a slave a body that was sacrosanct to the victors,53 though even had he been unharmed, he would have repented of his escape; for what were baser than that a Pompey should live by the bounty of a king!
If Marcus Cicero had fallen at the moment when he escaped the daggers of Catiline, which were aimed not less at him than at his country, if he had fallen as the savior of the commonwealth which he had freed, if his death had followed close upon that of his daughter,54 even then he might have died happy. He would not have seen swords drawn to take the lives of Roman citizens, nor assassins parceling out the goods of their victims in order that these might even be murdered at their own cost, nor the spoils of a consul55 put up at public auction, nor murders contracted for officially, nor brigandage and war and pillage — so many new Catilines!
If the sea had swallowed up Marcus Cato as he was returning from Cyprus and his stewardship of the royal legacy,56 and along with him even the money which he was bringing to defray the expense of the Civil War, would it not then — the conviction that no one would have the effrontery to do wrong in the presence of Cato! As it was, having gained the respite of a very few years, that hero, who was born no less for personal than for political freedom, was forced to flee from Caesar and to submit to Pompey.
To your son, therefore, though his death was premature, it brought no ill; rather has it released him from suffering ills of every sort.