Stoic Snippets 285

Man, you have been a citizen in this great state; what difference does it make to you whether for five years or for three? For that which is conformable to the laws is just for all. 

Where is the hardship then, if no tyrant nor yet an unjust judge sends you away from the state, but Nature, who brought you into it? 

The same as if a praetor who has employed an actor dismisses him from the stage. 

"But I have not finished the five acts, but only three of them!"

You say it well, but in life the three acts are the whole drama; for what shall be a complete drama is determined by him who was once the cause of its composition, and now of its dissolution: but you are the cause of neither. 

Depart then satisfied, for he also who releases you is satisfied. 

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 12.36 

IMAGE: Gustave Moreau, The Young Man and Death (1865)