How we cite our quotes: (Book.Chapter)
Quote #4
Alexander, Pompey, Julius Caesar annihilated whole cities time after time, and slaughtered tens of thousands of horse and foot in the field of battle, and yet the moment came for them too to depart this life. Heraclitus speculated long on the conflagration of the universe, but the water of dropsy filled his guts...Vermin were the death of Democritus, and vermin of another sort killed Socrates. (3.3)
Marcus loves a good ironic observation. In this case, he's chosen famously vigorous and cruel conquerors to point out that everyone is going to die, no matter how violent, strong, or glorious they are. Even philosophers who spent an entire lifetime trying to work through the universe's most difficult existential puzzles ended up food for worms. No matter how close they got or how big their brains were, the universe was not impressed. Everyone winds up in the same place.
Quote #5
...one man follows a friend's funeral and is then laid out himself, then another follows him—and all in a brief space of time. The conclusion of this? You should always look on human life as short and cheap. Yesterday sperm: tomorrow a mummy or ashes. (4.48.2)
Well, there it is. Marcus isn't sentimental about the value of human life, or even about the relationships or experiences that normally anchor a person to a love of life. He understands that the same things happen from one generation to the next, and there's no point in attaching value to something as transient and fragile as human life.
Quote #6
In all this murk and dirt, in all this flux of being, time, movement, things moved, I cannot begin to see what on earth there is to value or even to aim for. Rather the opposite: one should console oneself with the anticipation of natural release, not impatient of its delay... (5.10.2)
If you were looking for an elegiac tone or a fond reflection on a life well lived, you've come to the wrong place. Marcus's strategy for dealing with mortality is to devalue the body and the life it lives on earth. It is, perhaps, a case of sour grapes—he can't have immortality, so he might as well dis mortal life to make it seem less wonderful. Or it could be that his experience of earthly reality makes him want to die as soon as possible. It' s clearly part of his philosophical practice not to attach value to human existence, since human existence is flawed beyond reason.