imagined that base things were bad and honourable things were good, and that all other things were neither good nor bad, you would not even have approached this enquiry, nor have come near it; but immediately you would have been able to distinguish them by the understanding as you would do (in other cases) by the vision. For when do you inquire if black things are white, if heavy things are light, and do not comprehend the manifest evidence of the senses? How then do you now say that you are considering whether things which are neither good nor bad ought to be avoided more than things which are bad? But you do not possess these opinions; and neither do these things seem to you to be neither good nor bad, but you think that they are the greatest evils; nor do you think those other things (mean and faithless words, etc.) to be evils, but matters which do not concern us at all. For thus from the beginning you have accustomed yourself. Where am I? In the schools and are any listening to me? I am discoursing among philosophers. But I have gone out of the school. Away with this talk of scholars and fools. Thus a friend is overpowered by the testimony of a philosopher:[1] thus a philosopher becomes a parasite; thus he lets himself for hire for money: thus in the senate a man does not say what he thinks; in private (in the school) he proclaims his opinions.[2] You are a cold and miserable little opinion, suspended from idle words as from a hair. But keep yourself strong and fit for the uses of life and initiated by being exercised in action. How do you hear (the report)?—I do not say, that your child is dead—for how could you bear that?—but that your oil is spilled, your wine drunk up. Do you act in such a way that one standing by you while you are making a great noise, may say this only, Philo-
- ↑ Epictetus is supposed to allude to the crime of Egnatius Celer who accused Barea Soranus at Rome in the reign of Nero (Tacit. Ann. xvi. 32).
Stoicus occidit Baream, delator amicum,
Discipulumque senex.
Juvenal, iii. 116. - ↑ Mrs. Carter says that 'there is much obscurity and some variety of reading in several lines of the original.' But see Schweig.'s notes. Epictetus is showing that talk about philosophy is useless: philosophy should be practical.
