On what cannot be experienced
“Death is nothing to us, for that which is dissolved is without sensation, and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us.”
The argument is narrower than it first sounds. Epicurus is not saying that dying is nothing, or that losing people is nothing. He is saying that the state itself contains no one to whom anything could happen.
Whether that consoles is a separate question, and he knew it. The fear rarely responds to the reasoning. But the reasoning is sound, and there is a peculiar steadiness in holding something true that feeling has not yet caught up with.