to submit to trial? For if you wish to be crucified, wait and the cross will come: but if you choose to submit and to plead your cause as well as you can, you must do what is consistent with this object, provided you maintain what is your own (your proper character).
For this reason also it is ridiculous to say, Suggest something to me[1] (tell me what to do). What should I suggest to you? Well, form my mind so as to accommodate itself to any event. Why that is just the same as if a man who is ignorant of letters should say, Tell me what to write when any name is proposed to me. For if I should tell him to write Dion, and then another should come and propose to him not the name of Dion but that of Theon, what will be done? what will he write? But if you have practised writing, you are also prepared to write (or to do) any thing that is required. If[2] you are not, what can I now suggest? For if circumstances require something else, what will you say, or what will you do? Remember then this general precept and you will need no suggestion. But if you gape after externals, you must of necessity ramble up and down in obedience to the will of your master. And who is the master? He who has the power over the things which you seek to gain or try to avoid.[3]
- ↑ "The meaning is, You must not ask for advice when you are come into a difficulty, but every man cught to have such principles as to be ready on all occasions to act as he ought; just as he who knows how to write can write any name which is proposed to him."—Wolf.
- ↑ "The reader must know that these dissertations were spoken extempore, and that one thing after another would come into the thoughts of the speaker. So the reader will not be surprised that when the discourse is on the maintenance of firmness or freedom from perturbations, Epictetus should now speak of philosophical preparation, which is most efficient for the maintenance of firmness."—Wolf. See also Schweig.'s note on section 21, "Suggest something to me:" and ii. 24.
- ↑ In the Encheiridion or Manual (c. 14) it is written, 'Every man's master is he who has the power to give to a man or take away that which he would have or not have: whoever then wishes to be free, let him neither seek any thing or avoid any thing which is in the power of others: if he does not act thus, he will be a slave.'
