Caput

 1 II   |          condescend to listen to your words, he permits you to
 2 II   |    company, but could not endure your own. ~
 3 III  |       you are pressing hard upon your hundredth year, or are even
 4 III  |      beyond it; come now, recall your life and make a reckoning.
 5 III  |  reckoning. Consider how much of your time was taken up with a
 6 III  |       how much in wrangling with your wife, how much in punishing
 7 III  |      wife, how much in punishing your slaves, how much in rushing
 8 III  |          you have fewer years to your credit than you count. Look
 9 III  |  intended, when you were ever at your own disposal, when your
10 III  |          your own disposal, when your face ever wore its natural
11 III  |         natural expression, when your mind was ever unperturbed,
12 III  |        that you are dying before your season!"7 What, then, is
13 III  |      live forever, no thought of your frailty ever enters your
14 III  |         your frailty ever enters your head, of how much time has
15 III  |       person or thing is perhaps your last. You have all the fears
16 III  |   guarantee, pray, have you that your life will last longer? Who
17 III  |          longer? Who will suffer your course to be just as you
18 VI   |     shrink into the merest span; your vices will swallow up any
19 VII  |   themselves, turn you away from your own self. Of how many days
20 VII  |  powerful friend who has you and your like on the list, not of
21 VII  |           and review the days of your life; you will see that
22 IX   |        let go that which lies in your own. Whither do you look?
23 IX   |          Why, to whatever length your greed inclines, do you stretch
24 X    |      Fabianus,20 who was none of your lecture-room philosophers
25 X    |     behold them and keep them at your will—a thing which those
26 XIII |     yourself, in no way pleasure your secret soul, and, if you
27 XV   |       one of these will wear out your years, but each will add
28 XV   | friendship of none will endanger your life, the courting of none
29 XV   |        courting of none will tax your purse. From them you will
30 XVIII|     public life; long enough has your virtue been displayed in
31 XVIII|     leisure. The greater part of your life, certainly the better
32 XVIII|     state; take now some part of your time for yourself as well.
33 XVIII|        inaction, or to drown all your native energy in slumbers
34 XVIII|       occupy you in the midst of your release and retirement.
35 XVIII|        as carefully as you would your own, as conscientiously
36 XVIII|          and reflect that in all your training in the liberal
37 XVIII|          studies, extending from your earliest years, you were
38 XVIII|        thousand pecks of corn to your charge; you gave hope of
39 XVIII|          to such a great burden; your dealings are with the belly
40 XIX  |        God has; what fate awaits your soul; where Nature lays
41 XIX  |        leave the ground and turn your mind's eye upon these things!