for I am free, and a friend of God, and so I obey him willingly. But I must not claim (seek) any thing else, neither body nor possession, nor magistracy, nor good report, nor in fact any thing. For he (God) does not allow me to claim (seek) them: for if he had chosen, he would have made them good for me; but he has not done so, and for this reason I cannot transgress his commands.[1] Preserve that which is your own good in every thing; and as to every other thing, as it is permitted, and so far as to behave consistently with reason in respect to them, content with this only. If you do not, you will be unfortunate, you will fail in all things, you will be hindered, you will be impeded. These are the laws which have been sent from thence (from God); these are the orders. Of these laws a man ought to be an expositor, to these he ought to submit, not to those of Masurius and Cassius.[2]
CHAPTER IV.
to those who are desirous of passing life in tranquillity.
Remember that not only the desire of power and of riches makes us mean and subject to others, but even the desire of tranquillity, and of leisure, and of travelling abroad, and of learning. For to speak plainly, whatever the external thing may be, the value which we set upon it places us in subjection to others. What then is the difference between desiring to be a senator or not desiring to be one; what is the difference between desiring power or being content with a private station; what is the difference between saying, I am unhappy, I have nothing to do, but I am bound to my books as a corpse; or saying, I am unhappy, I have no leisure for reading? For as salutations[3] and power are things external and independent of
- ↑ See i. 25. note 1; iv. 7. 17.
- ↑ Masurius Sabinus was a great Roman jurisconsult in the times of Augustus and Tiberius. He is sometimes named Masurius only (Persius, v. 90). C. Cassius Longinus was also a jurist, and, it is said, a descendant of the Cassius, who was one of the murderers of the dictator C. Caesar. He lived from the time of Tiberius to that of Vespasian.
- ↑ ἀσπασμοί. See this chapter further on.
