Moral Letters to Lucilius Section 4

Quid hoc est? inquam. Tam saepe mors experitur me? Faciat; ego illam diu expertus sum. Quando? inquis. Antequam nascerer. Mors est non esse; id quale sit, iam scio. Hoc erit post me, quod ante me fuit. Si quid in hac re tormenti est, necesse est et fuisse, antequam prodiremus in lucem; atqui nullam sensimus tunc vexationem.

La mort me tâtera-t-elle sans cesse ? Eh bien soit ! Moi aussi j’ai longtemps tâté d’elle. « Quand cela ? » dis-tu. Avant de naître. La mort, c’est le non être : ne l’ai-je pas déjà connu ? il en sera après moi ce qu’il en était avant. Si la mort est un état de souffrance, on a dû souffrir avant de venir à la lumière ; et pourtant alors nous ne sentions nul déplaisir.

“What?” I say to myself; “does death so often test me? Let it do so; I myself have for a long time tested death.” “When?” you ask. Before I was born. Death is non-existence, and I know already what that means. What was before me will happen again after me. If there is any suffering in this state, there must have been such suffering also in the past, before we entered the light of day. As a matter of fact, however, we felt no discomfort then.