Delphi Complete Works of Epictetus (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 86)

by Epictetus

  Shall we not wean ourselves at last, and call to mind what we have heard from the philosophers? — if, indeed, we did not listen to them as to enchanters — when they said that this universe is but a single state, and the substance out of which it has been fashioned is single, and it needs must be that there is a certain periodic change and a giving place of one thing to another, and that some things must be dissolved and others come into being, some things to remain in the same place and others to be moved. Further, that all things are full of friends, first gods, and then also men, who by nature have been made of one household with one another; and that some men must remain with each other, while others must depart, and that though we must rejoice in those who dwell with us, yet we must not grieve at those who depart. And man, in addition to being by nature high-minded and capable of despising all the things that are outside the sphere of his moral purpose, possesses also this further quality, that, namely, of not being rooted nor growing in the earth, but of moving now to one place and now to another, at one time under the pressure of certain needs, and at another merely for the sake of the spectacle.

  Now it was something of this sort which fell to the lot of Odysseus:

  Many the men whose towns he beheld, and he learned of their temper.

  And even before his time it was the fortune of Heracles to traverse the entire inhabited world,

  Seeing the wanton behaviour of men and the lawful,

  casting forth the one and clearing the world of it, and introducing the other in its place. Yet how many friends do you suppose he had in Thebes, in Argos, in Athens, and how many new friends he made on his rounds, seeing that he was even in the habit of marrying when he saw fit, and begetting children, and deserting his children, without either groaning or yearning for them, or as though leaving them to be orphans? It was because he knew that no human being is an orphan, but all men have ever and constantly the Father, who cares for them. Why, to him it was no mere story which he had heard, that Zeus is father of men, for he always thought of Him as his own father, and called Him so, and in all that he did he looked to Him. Wherefore he had the power to live happily in every place. But it is impossible that happiness, and yearning for what is not present, should ever be united. For happiness must already possess everything that it wants; it must resemble a replete person: he cannot feel thirst or hunger. — Still, Odysseus felt a longing for his wife, and sat upon a rock and wept. — And do you take Homer and his tales as authority for everything? If Odysseus really wept, what else could he have been but miserable? But what good and excellent man is miserable? In all truth the universe is badly managed, if Zeus does not take care of His own citizens, that they be like Him, that is, happy. Nay, it is unlawful and unholy to think of such an alternative, but if Odysseus wept and wailed, he was not a good man. Why, what man could be good who does not know who he is? And who knows that, if he has forgotten that the things which come into being are corruptible, and that it is impossible for one human being always to live with another? What then? To reach out for the impossible is slavish and foolish; it is acting like a stranger in the universe, one who is fighting against God with the only weapons at his command, his own judgements.

  But my mother mourns because she does not see me. — Yes, but why did she not learn the meaning of these words of the philosophers? And I am not saying that you ought to take no pains to keep her from lamenting, but only that a person ought not to want at all costs what is not his own. Now another’s grief is no concern of mine, but my own grief is. Therefore, I will put an end at all costs to what is my own concern, for it is under my control: and that which is another’s concern I will endeavour to check to the best of my ability, but my effort to do so will not be made at all costs. Otherwise I shall be fighting against God, I shall be setting myself in opposition to Zeus, I shall be arraying myself against Him in regard to His administration of the universe. And the wages of this fighting against God and this disobedience will not be paid by “children’s children,” but by me myself in my own person, by day and by night, as I start up out of dreams and am disturbed, trembling at every message, with my own peace of mind depending upon letters not my own. Someone has arrived from Rome. “If only there is no bad news!” But how can anything bad for you happen in a place, if you are not there? Someone arrives from Greece. “If only there is no bad news!” In this way for you every place can cause misfortune. Isn’t it enough for you to be miserable where you are? Must you needs be miserable even beyond the seas, and by letter? Is this the fashion in which all that concerns you is secure? — Yes, but what if my friends over there die? — Why, what else than that mortal men died? Or how can you wish to reach old age yourself, and at the same time not behold the death of any that you love? Do you not know that in the long course of time many different things must needs happen; fever must overcome one man, a brigand another, a tyrant a third? Because such is the character of the air about us, such that of our associates; cold and heat and unsuitable food, and journeys by land and by sea, and winds and all manner of perils; this man they destroy, that man they drive into exile, another they send on an embassy, and yet another on a campaign. Sit down, therefore, and get all wrought up at each one of these events, mourning, unfortunate, miserable, depend on something other than yourself, and that not one thing or two, but tens upon tens of thousands of things!

  Is that what you used to hear when you sat at the feet of the philosophers? Is that what you learned? Do you not know that the business of life is a campaign? One man must mount guard, another go out on reconnaissance, and another out to fight. It is not possible for all to stay in the same place, nor is it better so. But you neglect to perform the duties assigned you by your commanding officer, and complain when some rather hard order is given you, and fail to understand to what a state you are bringing the army, as far as in you lies; because, if they all imitate you, no one will dig a trench, no one construct a palisade, or watch through the night, or risk his life in fighting, but they will seem useless soldiers. Again, if you take ship as a sailor, take up one place and stick to that I and if you have to climb the mast, be unwilling; if you have to run to the bow, be unwilling! And what ship’s captain will put up with you? Won’t he throw you overboard like a piece of junk, nothing but a nuisance, and a bad example to the other sailors? So also in this world; each man’s life is a kind of campaign, and a long and complicated one at that. You have to maintain the character of a soldier, and do each separate act at the bidding of the General, if possible divining what He wishes. For there is no comparison between this General and an ordinary one, either in His power, or in the pre-eminence of His character. You have been given a post in an imperial city, and not in some mean place; not for a short time either, but you are a senator for life. Do you not know that a man in such a post has to give only a httle attention to the affairs of his own household, but for most of the time lias to be away, in command, or under command, or serving some official, or in the field, or on the judge’s bench? And then you want to be attached to the same spot and rooted in it like a plant? — Yes, it is pleasant. — Why deny it? But soup is pleasant too, and a pretty woman is a pleasant thing. What else do those say who make pleasure their end?

  Do you not realize the kind of men they are whose language you have just uttered? That they are Epicureans and blackguards? And yet, while doing their deeds and holding their opinions, you recite to us the words of Zeno and Socrates? Will you not cast away from you, as far as you can fling them, these alien trappings with which you adorn yourself, although they do not at all become you? Or what else do these fellows want but to sleep without hindrance or compulsion, and after they have arisen, to yawn at their ease, and wash their faces; then to write and read what they please, then to babble something or other, to the applause of their friends, no matter what they say; then to go out for a stroll, and after a short walk to take a bath; then to eat, then to seek their rest, and sleep in such a bed as you might expect such persons to enjoy — why should I say
the word? For you can infer what it is like.

  Come now, do you also tell me your style of life, the one on which you have set your heart, you eager follower of the truth, and of Socrates, and of Diogenes! What do you want to do in Athens? Just what I have described? Nothing at all differcnt? Why, then, do you call yourself a Stoic? Well, but those who falsely claim Roman citizenship are severely punished, and ought those who falsely claim so great and so dignified a calling and title to get off scot-free? Or is that impossible? whereas the divine and mighty and inescapable law is the law which exacts the greatest penalties from those who are guilty of the greatest offences. Now what are its terms? “Let him who makes pretence to things which in no wise concern him be a braggart, let him be a vainglorious man; let him who disobeys the divine governance be abject, be a slave, suffer grief, envy, pity, — in a word, be miserable, and lament,”

  Well, what then? Do you want me to pay court to So-and-so? go to his front-door? — If reason so decides, for the sake of your country, your kinsmen, mankind in general, why not go? Why, you are not ashamed to go to the door of the cobbler when you need shoes, nor to that of the market-gardener when you need lettuce; and are you ashamed to go to the door of the rich when you want something that rich men have? — Very true, for as to the cobbler, I do not have to admire him. — Don’t admire the rich man, either, — And I shall not have to flatter the market-gardener. — Don’t flatter the rich man either. — How, then, shall I get what I need? — Am I telling you, “Go like a man who is certain to get what he wants,” and not simply, “Go in order to do what becomes you”? — Why, then, do I go at all? — So as to have gone, so as to have performed the function of the citizen that you are, of a brother. of a friend. And furthermore, remember that you have come to see a cobbler, a vegetable-dealer, a man who has authority over nothing great or important, even if he sell it for a high price. You are going, as it were, for heads of lettuce; they are worth an obol, not a talent. So it is in our life also. The matter in hand is worth going to a person’s door about; very well, I will go. It is also worth an interview; very well, I will interview him about it. Yes, but I will have to kiss his hand also, and flatter him with words of praise. Go to! that is paying a talent for a head of lettuce! It is not profitable to me, nor to the State, nor to my friends, to ruin by so acting a good citizen and friend.

  Yes, but if you fail, people will think that you didn’t try hard. Have you gone and forgotten again why you went? Don’t you know that a good and excellent man does nothing for the sake of appearances, but only for the sake of having acted right? — What good does he get, then, from acting right? — And what good does the person get for writing the name “Dio” as it ought to be written? The mere fact of writing it that way. — Is there, then, no further reward? — And are you looking for some further reward in the case of a good man, a reward which is greater than the doing of what is fine and right? At Olympia nobody wants anything else, but you feel content with having received an Olympic crown. Does it seem to you so small and worthless a thing to be good, and excellent, and happy? Therefore, when you have been introduced into this city-state by the gods, and find it now your duty to lay hand to the work of a man, do you yearn for nurses and the breast, and does the weeping of poor silly women move you and make you effeminate? And so will you never get over being an infant? Don’t you know that, when a person acts like a child, the older he is the more ridiculous he is?

  In Athens did you see nobody when you went to his house? — Yes, the man I wanted to see. — Here also make up your mind to see this man, and you will see the man you want; only do not go humbly, not with desire or aversion, and all will be well with you. But this result is not to be found by mere going, nor by standing at gates, but in one’s judgements within. When you have contemned things external and outside the province of your moral purpose, and have come to regard none of them as your own, but only the being right in judgement, in thinking, in choosing, in desiring, in avoiding, — where is there any longer room for flattery, where for an abject spirit? Why any longer yearn for the quiet you enjoyed there, or your familiar haunts? Wait a little while and you will find the places here familiar in their turn. And then, if you are so ignoble in spirit, weep and wail again when you leave these too!

  How, then, shall I become affectionate? — As a man of noble spirit, as one who is fortunate; for it is against all reason to be abject, or broken in spirit, or to depend on something other than yourself, or even to blame either God or man. I would have you become affectionate in such a way as to maintain at the same time all these rules; if, however, by virtue of this natural affection, whatever it is you call by that name, you are going to be a slave and miserable, it does not profit you to be affectionate. And what keeps you from loving a person as one subject to death, as one who may leave you? Did not Socrates love his own children? But in a free spirit, as one who remembers that it was his first duty to be a friend to the gods. That is why he succeeded in everything that becomes a good man, both in making his defence, and in assessing his own penalty, and before that time in his services as senator or soldier. But we abound in all manner of excuses for being ignoble; with some it is a child, with others a mother, and then again it is brothers. But it is not becoming for us to be unhappy on any person’s account, but to be happy because of all, and above all others because of God, who has made us for this end. Come, was there anybody that Diogenes did not love, a man who was so gentle and kind-hearted that he gladly took upon himself all those troubles and physical hardships for the sake of the common weal? But what was the manner of his loving? As became a servant of Zeus, caring for men indeed, but at the same time subject unto God. That is why for him alone the whole world, and no special place, was his fatherland; and when he had been taken prisoner he did not hanker for Athens nor his acquaintances and friends there, but he got on good terms with the pirates and tried to reform them. And later, when he was sold into slavery at Corinth he kept on living there just as he had formerly lived at Athens; yes, and if he had gone off to the Perrhaebians he would have acted in quite the same way. That is how freedom is achieved. That is why he used to say, “From the time that Antisthenes set me free, I have ceased to be a slave.” How did Antisthenes set him free? Listen to what Diogenes says. “He taught me what was mine, and what was not mine. Property is not mine; kinsmen, members of my household, friends, reputation, famihar places, converse with men — all these are not my own. ‘What, then, is yours? Power to deal with external impressions.’ He showed me that I possess this beyond all hindrance and constraint; no one can hamper me; no one can force me to deal with them otherwise than as I will. Who, then, has authority over me? Philip, or Alexander, or Perdiccas, or the Great King? Where can they get it? For the man who is destined to be overjwwered by a man must long before that have been overpowered by things.” Therefore, the man over whom pleasure has no power, nor evil, nor fame, nor wealth, and who, whenever it seems good to him, can spit his whole paltry body into some oppressor’s face and depart from this life — whose slave can he any longer be, whose subject? But if he had gone on living pleasantly in Athens, and had been enamoured of his life there, his fortune would have been in every man’s control, and the man who was stronger than he would have had power to cause him grief. How do you imagine he would have wheedled the pirates to sell him to some Athenian, so that he might some time see the beautiful Piraeus, and the Long Walls and the Acropolis! Who are you that you should see them, slave? A thrall and a person of abject spirit; and what good are they to you? — No, not a slave, but a free man. — Show me how you are free. See, some person or other has laid hands on you — the man who takes you away from your accustomed way of life, and says, “You are my slave; for it is in my power to prevent you from living as you will, it is in my power to lighten your servitude, or to humble you; whenever I wish, you can be happy again, and go off to Athens in high spirits.” What do you say to this man who makes you his slave? Whom have you to offer him as your emancipator?
Or do you not even look him in the face at all, but cutting all argument short do you implore him to set you free? Man, you ought to go gladly to prison, in haste, outstripping those who lead you away. And then, I do beseech vou, are you loath to live in Rome, and do you yearn for Greece? And when you have to die, then also, I suppose, will you weep all over us, because you are never going to see Athens again or stroll in the Lyceum?