Cicero's Tusculan Disputations, On the Nature of the Gods, and On the Commonwealth

M. What is it that you do say, then?

A. I say, for instance, that Marcus Crassus A wealthy and powerful Roman general. is miserable in being deprived of such great riches as his by death; that Cn. Pompey Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, a Roman general and statesman. is miserable in being taken from such glory and honor; and, in short, that all are miserable who are deprived of this light of life.

M. You have returned to the same point, for to be miserable implies an existence; but you just now denied that the dead had any existence. If, then, they have none, they can be nothing; and if so, they are not even miserable.

A. Perhaps I do not express what I mean, for I look upon this very circumstance—not to exist after having existed—to be very miserable.

M. What, more so than not to have existed at all? Therefore, those who are not yet born are miserable because they are not; and we ourselves, if we are to be miserable after death, were miserable before we were born. But I do not remember that I was miserable before I was born; and I should be glad to know, if your memory is better, what you recollect of yourself before you were born.

VII. A. You are pleasant: as if I had said that those men are miserable who are not born, and not that they are so who are dead.

M. You say, then, that they are so?

A. Yes; I say that because they no longer exist after having existed, they are miserable.

M. You do not perceive that you are asserting contradictions; for what is a greater contradiction than that something should be not only miserable, but should have any existence at all, when it does not exist? When you go out at the Capene gate A gate in the Roman walls near which many tombs were located. and see the tombs of the Calatini, the Scipios, Servilii, and Metelli Distinguished Roman noble families., do you look on them as miserable?

A. Because you press me with a word, henceforward I will not say they are miserable absolutely, but miserable on this account, because they have no existence.

M. You do not say, then, "M. Crassus is miserable," but only "Miserable M. Crassus."

A. Exactly so.

M. As if it did not follow that whatever you speak of