Preoccupation with death and the process of dying is probably as old as the appearance of self-consciousness in human beings. Once we developed the ability to reflect on who we are and what we do, we realized that “we” were one day going to cease to exist. Arguably, the resulting existential anxiety has been a major force behind the development and success of worldwide religions, with their frequent promise of an afterlife. But there have always been alternative, more secular, ways of dealing with death, developed since the time of the Graeco-Roman philosophers of antiquity. While Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus and Zeno (the founder of Stoicism) were not atheists, their philosophies had, and still have, much to offer in terms of non-religious approaches to dying. In this paper I explore how the major schools of Graeco-Roman philosophy took on the last stage of human life, and how a modern, scientifically informed secular person can profit from an update to that ancient wisdom.