51-52: ‘She left behind ... strife.’ Seneca writes of the benefits conferred by death even going as far as exalting death as the liberator from the world's evils: "Can you this day find anyone whose fortunes are so happily placed and so firmly grounded that he has nothing to fear from the advance of time." To Marcia on Consolation XXII 2. It is a cliché popular amongst consolatory writers, cf. Cicero, Letters to his Friends V.xvi.3; Statius, Silvae II.i.222-223; Greek Anthology VII 603. Seneca makes such an escape from the ills of this world an even more attractive proposition by expounding upon the hope of a blissful afterlife: "Besides the fact that all the future is uncertain, and more certain to be worse than otherwise, it is true that the souls that are quickly released from intercourse with men find the journey to the gods above most easily [...] they chafe against the narrow bounds, accustomed as they are to range far aloft throughout the universe, and from on high to look down in scorn upon the affairs of men." To Marcia on Consolation XXIII 1-3.