love with old women and old men, and wipe the old women's noses, and wash them and give them presents, and also wait on them like a slave when they are sick, and at the same time wish them dead, and question the physicians whether they are sick unto death? And again, when in order to obtain these great and much admired magistracies and honours, you kiss the hands of these slaves of others, and so you are not the slave even of free men. Then you walk about before me in stately fashion a praetor or a consul. Do I not know how you became a praetor, by what means you got your consulship, who gave it to you? I would not even choose to live, if I must live by help of Felicion[1] and endure his arrogance and servile insolence: for I know what a slave is, who is fortunate, as he thinks, and puffed up by pride.
You then, a man may say, are you free? I wish, by the Gods, and pray to be free; but I am not yet able to face my masters, I still value my poor body, I value greatly the preservation of it entire, though I do not possess it entire.[2] But I can point out to you a free man, that you may no longer seek an example. Diogenes was free. How was he free?—not because he was born of free parents,[3] but because he was himself free, because he had cast off all the handles of slavery, and it was not possible for any man to approach him, nor had any man the means of laying hold of him to enslave him. He had everything easily loosed, everything only hanging to him. If you laid hold of his property, he would have rather let it go and be yours, than he would have followed you for it: if you had laid hold of his leg, he would have let go his leg; if of all his body, all his poor body; his intimates, friends, country, just the same. For he knew
- ↑ Felicion. See i. 19, p. 62.
- ↑ Epictetus alludes to his lameness: compare i. 8. 14, i. 16. 20, and other passages. Upton.
- ↑ Schweig. doubts if the words οὐ γὰρ ἦν, which I have omitted, are genuine, and gives his reasons for the doubt.
this chapter. His teaching is impracticable, contrary to that of Epictetus, and to the nature and constitution of man; and it is rejected by the good sense of Christians who affect to receive his teaching; except, I suppose, by the superstitious body of Christians, who recommend and commend the so-called religious, and unmarried life.
