sure and pain; for if he comes without these things, bring Caesar to me and you will see how firm I am.[1] But when he shall come with these things, thundering and lightning,[2] and when I am afraid of them, what do I do then except to recognize my master like the runaway slave? But so long as I have any respite from these terrors, as a runaway slave stands in the theatre, so do I: I bathe, I drink, I sing; but all this I do with terror and uneasiness. But if I shall release myself from my masters, that is from those things by means of which masters are formidable, what further trouble have I, what master have I still?
What then, ought we to publish these things to all men? No, but we ought to accommodate ourselves to the ignorant[3] (τοῖς ἰδιώταις) and to say: "This man recommends to me that which he thinks good for himself: I excuse him." For Socrates also excused the jailor, who had the charge of him in prison and was weeping when Socrates was going to drink the poison, and said, How generously he laments over us.[4] Does he then say to the jailor that for this reason we have sent away the women? No, but he says it to his friends who were able to hear (understand) it; and he treats the jailor as a child.
- ↑ The word is εὐσταθῶ. The corresponding noun is εὐστάθεια, which is the title of this chapter.
- ↑ Upton supposes that Epictetus is alluding to the verse of Aristophanes (Acharn. 531), where it is said of Pericles:
"He flashed, he thundered, and confounded Hellas."
- ↑ He calls the uninstructed and ignorant by the Greek word "Idiotae," "idiots," which we now use in a peculiar sense. An Idiota was a private individual as opposed to one who filled some public office; and thence it had generally the sense of one who was ignorant of any particular art, as, for instance, one who had not studied philosophy.
- ↑ Compare the Phaedon of Plato (p. 116). The children of Socrates were brought in to see him before he took the poison by which he died; and also the wives of the friends of Socrates who attended him to his death. Socrates had ordered his wife Xanthippe to be led home before he had his last conversation with his friends, and she was taken away lamenting and bewailing.
