Epicurus and Lucretius on Death

Epicurus: Letter to Menoeceus (excerpt) (1) Accustom yourself to believe that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply awareness, and death is the absence of all awareness. (2) Therefore a right understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life an unlimited time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. (3) For there is nothing fearful in living for those who thoroughly grasp that there is nothing fearful in not living. (4) Foolish, therefore, is the person who says that he fears death, not because it will pain when it comes, but because it pains in the prospect. Whatever causes no annoyance when it is present, causes only a groundless pain in the expectation. (5) Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we exist death is not present, and when death is present we do not exist. It is nothing, then, either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it is not and the dead exist no longer. (6) People sometimes shun death as the greatest of all evils, but at other times choose it as a respite from the evils in life. But the wise person neither deprecates life nor does he fear its ending. The thought of life is no offense to him, nor is death regarded as an evil. But just as he chooses the pleasantest food, not simply the greater quantity, so too he enjoys the pleasantest time, not the longest. (7) And he who admonishes the young to live well and the old to make a good end speaks foolishly, not merely because of the desirability of life, but because the same exercise at once teaches to live well and to die well. (8) Much worse is he who says that it were good not to be born, but when once one is born to pass with all speed through the gates of Hades. For if he truly believes this, why does he not depart from life? It were easy for him to do so, if once he were firmly convinced. If he speaks only in mockery, his words are foolishness, for those who hear them will not believe him.

Lucretius: On the Nature of Things (excerpt) (1) Therefore death is nothing to us, of no concern whatsoever, once it is appreciated that the mind is mortal. (2) Just as in the past we had no sensation of discomfort when the Carthaginians were converging to attack [] so too, when we will no longer exist [] you can take it that nothing at all will be able to affect us and to stir our sensation not if the earth collapses into sea, and sea into sky. (3) Even if the nature of our mind and the power of our spirit do have sensation after they are torn from our bodies, that is still nothing to us, who are constituted by the conjunction of body and spirit. (4) Or supposing that after death the passage of time will bring our matter back together and reconstitute it in its present arrangement, and the light of life will be restored to us, even that eventuality would be of no concern to us, once our self-recollection was interrupted. Nor do our selves which existed in the past concern us now: we feel no anguish about them. [] (5) For if there is going to be unhappiness and suffering, the person must also himself exist at that same time, for the evil to be able to befall him. Since death robs him of this, preventing the existence of the person for the evils to be heaped upon, you can tell that there is nothing for us to fear in death, that he who does not exist cannot be unhappy, and that when immortal death snatches away a mortal life it is no different from never having been born. [] (6) 'No more for you the welcome of a joyful home and a good wife. No more will your children run to snatch the first kiss, and move your heart with unspoken delight. No more will you be able to protect the success of your affairs and your dependents. Unhappy man,' they say, 'unhappily robbed by a single hateful day of all those rewards of life." What they fail to add is: 'Nor does any yearning for those things remain in you.' If they properly saw this with their mind, and followed it up in their words, they would unshackle themselves of great anguish and fear. [] (7) Nor do we, or can we, by prolonging life subtract anything from the time of death, so as perhaps to shorten our period of extinction! Hence you may live to see out as many centuries as you like: no less will everlasting death await you. No shorter will be the period of nonexistence for one who has ended his life from today than for one who perished many months or years ago.