vexed, if others have the advantage over you. For you too in syllogisms will claim to have the advantage over them; and if others should be vexed at this, you will console them by saying, 'I have learned them, and you have not.' Thus also where there is need of any practice, seek not that which is acquired from the need (of such practice), but yield in that matter to those who have had practice, and be yourself content with firmness of mind.
Go and salute a certain person. How? Not meanly.—But I have been shut out, for I have not learned to make my way through the window; and when I have found the door shut, I must either come back or enter through the window.—But still speak to him.—In what way? Not meanly. But suppose that you have not got what you wanted. Was this your business, and not his? Why then do you claim that which belongs to another? Always remember what is your own, and what belongs to another; and you will not be disturbed. Chrysippus therefore said well, So long as future things are uncertain, I always cling to. those which are more adapted to the conservation of that which is according to nature; for God himself has given me the faculty of such choice. But if I knew that it was fated (in the order of things) for me to be sick, I would even move towards it; for the foot also, if it had intelligence, would move to go into the mud.[1] For why are ears of corn produced? Is it not that they may become dry? And do they not become dry that they may be reaped?[2] for they are not separated from communion with other things. If then they had perception, ought they to wish never to be reaped? But this is a curse upon ears of corn, to be never reaped. So we must know that in the case of men too it is a curse not to die, just the same as not to be ripened and not to be reaped. But since we must be reaped, and we also know that we are reaped,
- ↑ Sec. ii. 5, 24.
- ↑ Epictetus alludes to the verses from the Hypsipyle of Euripides. Compare Antoninus (vii. 40): 'Life must be reaped like the ripe ears of corn: one man is born; another dies.' Cicero (Tuscul. Disp. iii. 25) has translated six verses from Euripides, and among them are these two:
tum vita omnibus
Metenda ut fruges: sic jubet necessitas.
