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man who is really a kinsman of the gods. But we think about ourselves, as if we were only stomachs, and intestines, and shameful parts; we fear, we desire; we flatter those who are able to help us in these matters, and we fear them also.

A man asked me to write to Rome about him, a man who, as most people thought, had been unfortunate, for formerly he was a man of rank and rich, but had been stripped of all, and was living here. I wrote on his behalf in a submissive manner; but when he had read the letter, he gave it back to me and said, "I wished for your help, not your pity: no evil has happened to me."

Thus also Musonius Rufus, in order to try me, used to say: This and this will befall you from your master; and when I replied that these were things which happen in the ordinary course of human affairs. Why then, said he, should I ask him for anything when I can obtain it from you? For, in fact, what a man has from himself, it is superfluous and foolish to receive from another?^[1] Shall I then, who am able to receive from myself greatness of soul and a generous spirit, receive from you land and money or a magisterial office? I hope not: I will not be so ignorant about my own possessions. But when a man is cowardly and mean, what else must be done for him than to write letters as you would about a corpse.^[2] Please to grant us the body of a certain person and a sextarius of poor blood. For such a person is, in fact, a carcase and a sextarius (a certain quantity) of blood, and nothing more. But if he were anything more, he would know that one man is not miserable through the means of another.

1. Schweighaeuser has a long note on this passage, to "receive from another." I think that there is no difficulty about the meaning; and the careful reader will find none. Epictetus was once a slave.
2. The meaning is obscure. Schweighaeuser thinks that the allusion is to a defeated enemy asking permission from the conqueror to bury the dead. Epictetus considers a man as a mere carcase who places his happiness in externals and in the favour of others.