Page:Discourses of Epictetus.djvu/154

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100
EPICTETUS.

does, bear (with things). For the door ought to be open for all occasions; and so we have no trouble.

What then is the fruit of these opinions? It is that which ought to be the most noble and the most becoming to those who are really educated, release from perturbation, release from fear, freedom. For in these matters we must not believe the many, who say that free persons only ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers who say that the educated only are free. How is this? In this manner. Is freedom any thing else than the power of living as we choose? Nothing else. Tell me then, ye men, do you wish to live in error? We do not. No one then who lives in error is free. Do you wish to live in fear? Do you wish to live in sorrow? Do you wish to live in perturbation? By no means. No one then who is in a state of fear or sorrow or perturbation is free; but whoever is delivered from sorrows and fears and perturbations, he is at the same time also delivered from servitude. How then can we continue to believe you, most dear legislators, when you say, We only allow free persons to be educated? For philosophers say we allow none to be free except the educated; that is, God does not allow it. When then a man has turned[1] round before the praetor his own slave, has he done nothing? He has done something. What? He has turned round his own slave before the praetor. Has he done nothing more? Yes: he is also bound to pay for him the tax called the twentieth. Well then, is not the man who has gone through this ceremony become free? No more than he is become free from perturbations. Have you who are able to turn round (free) others no

  1. This is an allusion to one of the Roman modes of manumitting a slave before the praetor. Compare, Persius, Sat. V. 75—

    Heu steriles veri, quibus una Quiritem
    Vertigo facit
    ;

    and again

    Verterit hunc dominus, momento turbinis exit
    Marcus Dama
    .

    The sum paid on manumission was a tax of five per cent., established in B.C. 356 (Livy, vii. 16), and paid by the slave. Epictetus here speaks of the tax being paid by the master; but in iii. 26, he speaks of it as paid by the enfranchised slave. See Dureau de la Malle, Economie Politique des Romains, i. 290, ii. 469.