The Egyptians embalm their dead, and keep them in their houses; the Persians dress them over with wax, and then bury them, that they may preserve their bodies as long as possible. It is customary with the Magi to bury none of their order, unless they have been first torn by wild beasts. In Hyrcania, the people maintain dogs for the public use; the nobles have their own—and we know that they have a good breed of dogs; but everyone, according to his ability, provides himself with some, in order to be torn by them; and they hold that to be the best kind of interment.
Chrysippus, who is curious in all kinds of historical facts, has collected many other things of this kind; but some of them are so offensive as not to admit of being related.
All that has been said of burying is not worth our regard with respect to ourselves, though it is not to be neglected as to our friends, provided we are thoroughly aware that the dead are insensible.
But the living, indeed, should consider what is due to custom and opinion; only they should at the same time consider that the dead are in no way interested in it. But death truly is then met with the greatest tranquility when the dying man can comfort himself with his own praise.
No one dies too soon who has finished the course of perfect virtue. I myself have known many occasions when I have seemed in danger of immediate death; oh! how I wish it had come to me! For I have gained nothing by the delay. I had gone over and over again the duties of life; nothing remained but to contend with fortune.
If reason, then, cannot sufficiently fortify us to enable us to feel a contempt for death, at all events let our past life prove that we have lived long enough, and even longer than was necessary; for notwithstanding the deprivation of sense, the dead are not without that good which peculiarly belongs to them, namely, the praise and glory which they have acquired, even though they are not sensible of it.
For although there be nothing in glory to make it desirable, yet it follows virtue as its shadow; and the genuine judgment of the multitude on good men, if ever they form any, is more to their own praise than of any real advantage to the dead.
Yet I cannot say, however it may be received, that Lycurgus and Solon have no glory from their laws, and from the political constitution which they established in their country; or that Themistocles and Epaminondas have not glory from their martial virtue.
—from Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.45
I was fortunate to grow up near a museum with a fine collection of Egyptian antiquities, and yet during my many visits I struggled to grasp why the preservation of the body was so important to their society. Why, I wondered, would they continue to attribute such significance to what was surely just a corpse?
Later, I learned about the Asian practice of sky burials, and I was quite shocked by the idea that the body was left deliberately exposed, to be consumed by the elements and wild animals. Why, I wondered, would they have such little respect for the remains of their loved ones?
The source of my confusion was not in the practices of these cultures, which were simply stressing different aspects of the human condition, but rather in my own uncertainty about where I should find the dignity of this life.
However a body ended up, whether it was treated with the most delicate care or left outdoors to decay, I was focusing too much on the fate of the flesh and bones. Now what was I going to do with the time that comes before death?
Celebrate a life by mummifying the remains, or point to its transience by casting them aside, but first and foremost embrace the virtues while the blood still flows.
When people dismiss what they consider to be primitive customs, I consider how we have our own distinct forms of honoring the dead, and in a few centuries people may be equally puzzled by our odd funerary rituals.
Cicero is applying some much-needed common sense to our attitudes about dying, reminding us how the way we treat the departed has much more to do with a peace of mind for the living than it does with the fate of those who have passed on. If death is indeed the end of awareness in this life, whatever else that might entail on any grander scale, the deceased can have no real preference about the pieces left behind.
I have never liked funerals, and as a teenager I once stubbornly refused to attend yet another one; I was tired of the gloom. My father rarely raised his voice to me, but when he did, I knew it was time to take heed.
“Of course you won’t break her heart if you’re not there, since she’s in a better place now. But are you going to treat her parents, and her brother, and all her friends like garbage? Offer some compassion for other people’s loss instead of wallowing in your own misery.”
As a Jesuit might say it, he wasn’t wrong.
If what happens to my insensible body can no longer affect me, then let me attend to living well while such an opportunity remains open to me. Knowing that I cannot be troubled by death after it has come to pass draws the attention back to the excellence of my conscious thoughts and deeds.
Where there was a committed effort to act with understanding and love, that will have been enough, such that no life is too short if it has been guided by sound principles. Indeed, there are times when a proper indifference towards death helps us to see how living longer is hardly necessary, perhaps even a stumbling block.
But will others remember me? Perhaps they will, in which case my work can leave something of worth for them. Perhaps they will not, though it won’t matter too much for me if I am now content with the content of my character.
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