and rhetorician. We ought to pray that such young men be born among us and brought up.
Do not so, I intreat you by the Gods, young man: but when you have once heard these words, go away and say to yourself, 'Epictetus has not said this to me; for how could he? but some propitious God through him: for it would never have come into his thoughts to say this, since he is not accustomed to talk thus with any person. Come then let us obey God, that we may not be subject to his anger.' You say, No. But (I say), if a crow by his croaking signifies any thing to you, it is not the crow which signifies, but God through the crow; and if he signifies any thing through a human voice, will he not cause the man to say this to you, that you may know the power of the divinity, that he signifies to some in this way, and to others in that way, and concerning the greatest things and the chief he signifies through the noblest messenger? What else is it which the poet says:
For we ourselves have warned him, and have sent.
Hermes the careful watcher, Argus' slayer,
The husband not to kill nor wed the wife.[1]
Was Hermes going to descend from heaven to say this to him (Aegisthus)? And now the Gods say this to you and send the messenger, the slayer of Argus, to warn you not to pervert that which is well arranged, nor to busy yourself about it, but to allow a man to be a man, and a woman to be a woman, a beautiful man to be as a beautiful man, and an ugly man as an ugly man, for you are not flesh and hair, but you are will (προαίρεσις); and if your will is beautiful, then you will be beautiful. But up to the present time I dare not tell you that you are ugly, for I think that you are readier to hear anything than this. But see what Socrates says to the most beautiful and blooming of men Alcibiades: Try then to be beautiful. What does he say to him? Dress your hair and pluck the hairs from your legs? Nothing of that kind. But adorn your will, take away bad opinions. How with
- ↑ From the Odyssey, i. 37, where Zeus is speaking of Aegisthus.
