tain person contrary to your opinion? and did you not flatter a certain person who was the son of a senator? Would you wish your own children to be such persons?—I hope not—Why then did you praise and flatter him? He is an ingenuous youth and listens well to discourses—How is this?—He admires me. You have stated your proof. Then what do you think? do not these very people secretly despise you? When then a man who is conscious that he has neither done any good nor ever thinks of it, finds a philosopher who says, You have a great natural talent, and you have a candid and good disposition, what else do you think that he says except this, This man has some need of me? Or tell me what act that indicates a great mind has he shown? Observe; he has been in your company a long time; he has listened to your discourses, he has heard you reading; has he become more modest? has he been turned to reflect on himself? has he perceived in what a bad state he is? has he cast away self-conceit? does he look for a person to teach him? He does. A man who will teach him to live? No, fool, but how to talk; for it is for this that he admires you also. Listen and hear what he says: This man writes with perfect art, much better than Dion.[1] This is altogether another thing. Does he say, This man is modest, faithful, free from perturbations? and even if he did say it, I should say to him, Since this man is faithful, tell me what this faithful man is. And if he could not tell me, I should add this, First understand what you say, and then speak.
You then, who are in a wretched plight and gaping after applause and counting your auditors, do you intend to be useful to others?—To-day many more attended my discourse. Yes, many; we suppose five hundred. That is nothing; suppose that there were a thousand—Dion never had so many hearers—How could he?—And they understand what is said beautifully. What is fine, master, can move even a stone—See, these are the words of a
- ↑ Dion of Prusa in Bithynia was named Chrysostomus (golden-mouthed) because of his eloquence. He was a rhetorician and sophist, as the term was then understood, and was living at the same time as Epictetus. Eighty of his orations written in Greek are still extant, and some fragments of fifteen.
