the tyrants, he who discoursed in such a manner about virtue and right behaviour. It is not possible to save such a man's life by base acts, but he is saved by dying, not by running away. For the good actor also preserves his character by stopping when he ought to stop, better than when he goes on acting beyond the proper time. What then shall the children of Socrates do? "If," said Socrates, "I had gone off to Thessaly, would you have taken care of them; and if I depart to the world below, will there be no man to take care of them?" See how he gives to death a gentle name and mocks it. But if you and I had been in his place, we should have immediately answered as philosophers that those who act unjustly must be repaid in the same way, and we should have added, "I shall be useful to many, if my life is saved, and if I die, I shall be useful to no man." For, if it had been necessary, we should have made our escape by slipping through a small hole. And how in that case should we have been useful to any man? for where would they have been then staying?[1] or if we were useful to men while we were alive, should we not have been much more useful to them by dying when we ought to die, and as we ought? And now Socrates being dead, no less useful to men, and even more useful, is the remembrance of that which he did or said when he was alive.[2]
- ↑ The original is ποῦ γὰρ ἂν ἔτι ἔμενον ἐκεῖνοι; this seems to mean, if we had escaped and left the country, where would those have been to whom we might have been useful? They would have been left behind, and we could have done nothing for them.
- ↑ This is the conclusion about Socrates, whom Epictetus highly valued the remembrance of what Socrates did and said is even more useful than his life. "The life of the dead," says Cicero of Servius Sulpicius, the great Roman jurist and Cicero's friend, "rests in the remembrance of the living." Epictetus has told us of some of the acts of Socrates, which prove him to have been a brave and honest man He does not tell us here what Socrates said, which means what he taught; but he knew what it was. Modern writers have expounded the matter at length, and in a form which Epictetus would not or could not have used.—Socrates left to others the questions which relate to the material world, and he first taught, as we are told, the things which concern man's daily life and his intercourse with other men: in other words he taught Ethic (the principles of morality). Fields and trees, he said, will teach me nothing, but man in his social state will; and man then is the proper subject of the philosophy of Socrates. The beginning of this knowledge was, as he said, to know himself according
