.

Hippocrates, who had healed many diseases, himself fell sick, and died.

 

The Chaldeans foretold the fatal hours of multitudes, and afterwards fate carried themselves 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.

 

Mediations 3:3

 

Hippocrates, the father of western medicine. The Chaldeans, an ancient people, disappeared into assimilation. Alexander the Great, Pompey, and Gaius Caesar, all three among the greatest generals of the ancient world. Heraclitus, among the first and most compelling of the Greek philosophers. Socrates, perhaps the greatest. All of them dead. Remember if it comes for men of this stature, it is coming for you as well. What will you say when that day comes? Will you have lead a good life?