[64] “If aught remains to be done by me, dispatch.”—Dio Cass. 76, ad fin.
[65] These were the followers of Zeno, a philosopher of Citium, in Cyprus, who founded the Stoic school, or “School of the Portico,” at Athens. The basis of his doctrines was the duty of making virtue the object of all our researches. According to him, the pleasures of the mind were preferable to those of the body, and his disciples were taught to view with indifference health or sickness, riches or poverty, pain or pleasure.
[66] “Who reckons the close of his life among the boons of nature.” Lord Bacon here quotes from memory; the passage is in the tenth Satire of Juvenal, and runs thus:—
“Fortem posce animum, mortis terrore carentem,
Qui spatium vitæ extremum inter munera ponat
Naturæ”—
“Pray for strong resolve, void of the fear of death, that reckons the closing period of life among the boons of nature.”
[67] He alludes to the song of Simeon, to whom the Holy Ghost had revealed, “that he should not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ.” When he beheld the infant Jesus in the temple, he took the child in his arms and burst forth into a song of thanksgiving, commencing, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.”—St. Luke ii. 29.
[68] “When dead, the same person shall be beloved.”—Hor. Ep. ii. 1, 14.
[69] “Behold, he is in the desert.”—St. Matthew xxiv. 26.