at the extremest old age will be brought into the same condition with him
who died prematurely.

34. What are these men's leading principles, and about what kind of
things are they busy, and for what kind of reasons do they love and
honor? Imagine that thou seest their poor souls laid bare. When they
think that they do harm by their blame or good by their praise, what an
idea!

35. Loss is nothing else than change. But the universal nature delights
in change, and in obedience to her all things are now done well, and from
eternity have been done in like form, and will be such to time without
end. What, then, dost thou say,--that all things have been and all things
always will be bad, and that no power has ever been found in so many gods
to rectify these things, but the world has been condemned to be bound in
never ceasing evil (IV. 45; VII. 88)?

36. The rottenness of the matter which is the foundation of everything:
water, dust, bones, filth: or again, marble rocks, the callosities of the
earth; and gold and silver, the sediments; and garments, only bits of
hair; and purple dye, blood; and everything else is of the same kind. And
that which is of the nature of breath is also another thing of the same
kind, changing from this to that.

37. Enough of this wretched life and murmuring and apish tricks. Why art
thou disturbed? What is there new in this? What unsettles thee? Is it the
form of the thing? Look at it. Or is it the matter? Look at it. But
besides these there is nothing. Towards the gods then, now become at last
more simple and better. It is the same whether we examine these things
for a hundred years or three.