Prayer to Jupiter

Thrasea Paetus, condemned by Nero, opened his veins and sprinkled the blood on the ground. Tacitus recorded his words.

Libamus … Iovi liberatori — we pour a libation to Jupiter the Liberator. A libation is the ordinary opening of any Roman rite: a few drops of wine on the ground before a meal or a sacrifice. Here blood stands in for wine, and a suicide is turned into a sacrifice in due form. The Stoic is not dying but performing a rite; and the deity has been chosen by name — the Liberator.

Specta, iuvenis — look, young man. Addressed to a young kinsman present, and it is an instruction, not a consolation: the death is presented as a lesson to be memorised.

Omen quidem dii prohibeant — and may the gods avert the omen. An aside, made in passing and quite sincere: what is said aloud may come true, and he has just shown a young man his own possible end. Breaking off his own lesson, the old man turns his own example away from the boy.

A reservation about this card. The identifier files the text under "terra-funerary", but there is no Earth in it; the deities field names Jupiter, and rightly.