[i] Prayer: As Lucius ‘motivated’ his soldiers before battle, ‘Pray that god is with you. If he is not, he is no god.’ However, even if the supernormal being/s believed in exist/s, does it not depend on what it is that you are doing, and why you are doing it, that s/he support/s you or not? Pray then, that what you about to do and your motivation are ‘godly’, or rather, worthy.
[ii] Death: As Lucius ‘assured’ when paraphrasing Epicurus to his troops, ‘We’ve nothing to fear. Where death is, we are not. Where we are, death is not.‘ However, this false dichotomy assumes death of the body is also death of the mind. With endless ghost stories, we know death is not the absolute end of life. ‘Fear’ then, so that you will be urged to seek the path to deathlessness.
[iii] Freedom: As Cicero was quoted to have said, ‘The slave dreams not of freedom but of a slave to call his own.’ However, the ones truly freed from physical and mental shackles of past experiences, ill as they might have been, will give rise to empathy, and dream of actualising freedom for everyone, even those still shackled mentally.
[iv] Revenge: As Marcus Aurelius was quoted to have written in his Meditations, ‘The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.’ The best get back is not to physically get back, but to rise above spiritually, to not be a lowly as those who have done wrong, to be higher with forgiveness and compassion, thus doing right. (With correction and protection of course.)
[v] Eternity: As Maximus said in the first Gladiator movie, ‘What we do in life, echoes in eternity.’ Thus was this line echoed repeatedly in Gladiator 2, here and there. So what if he is a fictitious character, if what uttered is always true? Of what use is (historical) fiction, if it does not portray and announce, to echo that which resonates with reality forever?
[vi] Point: As Lucius said, when unfairly given a wooden instead of a steel sword to fight, ‘Wood or steel. A point is still a point.’ Anyone with less resources at the moment, but with a keen focus, can eventually reach to ‘penetrate’ that targeted. We should simply make the best of what we have at the moment, till we have more to do even better.
[vii]-[viii] Name: As Macrinus claimed to justify his attempts to usurp the throne, ‘The gods themselves want Rome reborn. They sent me to fulfil that task.’ As Lucius retorted, ‘And what if your gods sent me here to kill you?’ Those claiming to do this and that in the name of ‘him’ or ‘her’ does not matter as much as why it is done, for altruism or not, and how it is done, with integrity or not.
Related Articles:
A Review Of Epicurus’ ‘Deadly’ Existential Mistake
https://thedailyenlightenment.com/2021/03/a-review-of-epicurus-deadly-existential-mistake
How The One You Believe Might Not Exist?
https://thedailyenlightenment.com/2024/09/how-the-one-you-believe-might-not-exist
How To Solve ‘The Problem Of Evil’ With Buddhism
https://thedailyenlightenment.com/2021/03/how-to-solve-the-problem-of-evil-with-buddhism
