Meanwhile, people keep robbing each other and getting robbed in return. Everyone disrupts everyone else's peace. They all make each other miserable. And through all this, life brings no real benefit, no joy, no growth of the mind. No one keeps death in front of their thoughts. No one stops making grand plans for the distant future. Some even arrange things that will happen after they die — massive tombs, public monuments, elaborate funeral games, and showy processions. But honestly, these people's funerals should be lit with torches and candles, as if they had lived only a few days.
Meanwhile, while they are plundering and being plundered, while one is disturbing another's repose, and all are being made wretched alike, life remains without profit, without pleasure, without any intellectual progress: no one keeps death well before his eyes, no one refrains from far-reaching hopes. Some even arrange things which lie beyond their own lives, such as huge sepulchral buildings, the dedication of public works, and exhibitions to be given at their funeral-pyre, and ostentatious processions: but, by Hercules, the funerals of such men ought to be conducted by the light of torches and wax tapers, as though they had lived but a few days.