beget children, to fill the usual magistracies.[1] For you are not come to select more pleasant places, but to live in these where you were born and of which you were made a citizen. Something of the kind takes place in the matter which we are considering. Since by the aid of speech and such communication as you receive here you must advance to perfection, and purge your will and correct the faculty which makes use of the appearances of things; and since it is necessary also for the teaching (delivery) of theorems to be effected by a certain mode of expression and with a certain variety and sharpness, some persons captivated by these very things abide in them, oue captivated by the expression, another by syllogisms, another again by sophisms, and still another by some other inn (πανδοκείου) of the kind; and there they stay and waste away as if they were among Sirens.
Man, your purpose (business) was to make yourself capable of using comformably to nature the appearances presented to you, in your desires not to be frustrated, in your aversion from things not to fall into that which you would avoid, never to have no luck (as one may say), nor ever to have bad luck, to be free, not hindered, not compelled, conforming yourself to the administration of Zeus, obeying it, well satisfied with this, blaming no one, charging no one with fault, able from your whole soul to utter these verses
Lead me, O Zeus, and thou too Destiny.[2]
Then having this purpose before you, if some little form of expression pleases you, if some theorems please you, do
- ↑ The Stoics taught that a man should lead an active life. Horace (Ep. i. 1. 16) represents himself as sometimes following the Stoic principles:but this was only talk. The Stoic should discharge all the duties of a citizen, says Epictetus; he should even marry and beget children. But the marrying may be done without any sense of duty; and the continuance of the human race is secured by the natural love of the male and of the female for conjunction. Still it is good advice, which the Roman censor Metellus gave to his fellow citizens, that, as they could not live without women, they should make the best of this business of marriage. (Gellius, i. 6.)
'Nunc agilis fio et mersor civilibus undis.'
- ↑ The rest of the verses are quoted in the Encheiridion, s. 52.
