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Rh least, not with the idea of being distressed if we do not see the end of it. We are born to act [and I am of opinion that not only an emperor, as Vespasian said, but every high-spirited man ought to die standing up].

Cum moriar, medium solvar et inter opus.

I desire that a man should act, (c) and prolong the employments of life as long as he can, (a) and that death may find me planting my cabbages, but indifferent regarding it, and even more regarding my unfinished garden. I have seen a man die, who, when he was at the last gasp, incessantly complained because his fate cut the thread of the history he had in hand of the fifteenth or sixteenth of our kings.

(b) Illud in his rebus non addunt, nec tibi earum Jam desiderium rerum super insidet una.

(a) We must get rid of such ordinary and harmful ideas. Just as our cemeteries have been laid out adjoining the churches and in the most frequented part of the towns, in order, as Lycurgus said, to accustom the lower classes, the women and children, not to take fright at the sight of a dead body, and that the constant spectacle of bones and tombs and funerals might warn us of our condition —

(b) Quin etiam exhilarare viris convivia cæde Mos olim, et miscere epulis spectacula dira Certantum ferro, sæpe et super ipsa cadentum Pocula, respersis non parco sanguine mensis;