A soul that gives way before the body

 It is a shame for the soul to be first to give way in this life, when thy body does not give way. Marcus Aurelius.  Meditations. Book 6.

Historical note: In Roman religion, the genius is the individual instance of a general divine nature that is present in every individual person, place, or thing. Much like a guardian angel, the genius would follow each man from the hour of his birth until the day he died. For women, this divine nature was known as the Juno spirit that would accompany each of them.

Image: Winged genius, fresco fragment from a Second-style Roman mural painting of the late 1st century BCE from the peristyle of the villa of P. Fannius Synistor in Boscoreale, near Pompeii now in The Louvre, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Marie-Lan Nguyen.