Hippocrates, who had healed many diseases, himself fell sick, and died. The Chaldeans foretold the fatal hours of multitudes, and afterwards fate carried them away. Alexander, Pompey, and Gaius Caesar, who so often razed whole cities, and cut off in battle so many myriads of horse and foot, at last departed from this life themselves. Heraclitus, after his many speculations on the conflagration of the world, died, swollen with water and plastered with cow-dung. Vermin destroyed Democritus; Socrates was killed by vermin of another sort. What of all this? You have gone aboard, made your voyage, come to harbor. Disembark: if into another life, there will God be also; if into nothingness, at least you will have done with bearing pain and pleasure, and with your slavery to this vessel so much meaner than its slave. For the soul is intelligence and deity, the body dust and corruption.

Meditations 3:3

As the great Bruce Springsteen once said “Everything dies baby that’s a fact”. Here Marcus reminds us of that, again. Does he need to remind us that Heraclitus, the great philosopher, died covered in shit? Yes, because even the smartest, the strongest, the most powerful will die, and for most of us, it won’t be pretty. Accept that, internalize that, and choose to live a life worth leading.