According to the Stoics, the sage is one who, thanks to a just exercise of thought and action, is able to attain a human version – if not of immortality – then at least of eternity. Admittedly, he is going to die, but death will not be for him the absolute end of everything. Rather it will be a transformation, a ‘rite of passage’, if you like, from one state to another, within a universal order whose perfection possesses complete stability, and by the same token possesses divinity.
