XCV explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Acceptance of Nature and Fate

  The chapter highlights the folly of blaming the gods for the natural events of death and aging, instead of accepting them as part of the universal order.

• Reason as Guide and Consolation

  The irrational behavior described—contradictory blaming and desperate clinging to life—serves as a negative example, showing what happens when reason is abandoned.

Characters to notice

• Epictetus

  The narrator who observes and criticizes the inconsistent human attitudes towards death and suffering.

• The Gods

  Blamed by people for both premature death and the prolonged suffering of old age, illustrating a failure to accept fate.

Key passages

• “When a man dies young, he blames the gods. When he is old and does not die, he blames the gods because he suffers when he ought to have already ceased from suffering.”

  People irrationally fault the divine whether death comes too soon or too late, never accepting their fate.

  Illustrates a fundamental lack of acceptance of nature's course.

• “when death approaches, he wishes to live, and sends to the physician and intreats him to omit no care or trouble.”

  Even when death is near after a long life of suffering, a person desperately seeks to prolong life.

  Highlights the contradiction between complaining about prolonged suffering and then fighting to continue it.

• “Wonderful, he said, are men, who are neither willing to live nor to die.”

  It is a strange and irrational state to be dissatisfied with both life and death.

  Epictetus's concluding remark on the absurdity of the common, unreasoned attitude.