But that this may be done (that such a declaration may be made), a man must receive (bear) no small things, nor are the things small which he must lose (go without). You cannot both wish to be a consul and to have these things (the power of making such a dying speech), and to be eager to have lands, and these things also; and to be solicitous about slaves and about yourself. But if you wish for any thing which belongs to another, that which is your own is lost. This is the nature of the thing: nothing is given or had for nothing.[1] And where is the wonder? If you wish to be a consul, you must keep awake, run about, kiss hands, waste yourself with exhaustion at other men's doors, say and do many things unworthy of a free man, send gifts to many, daily presents to some. And what is the thing that is got? Twelve bundles of rods (the consular fasces), to sit three or four times on the tribunal, to exhibit the games in the Circus and to give suppers in small baskets.[2] Or, if you
- ↑ See iv. 2. 2.
- ↑ These were what the Romans named 'sportulæ,' in which the rich used to give some eatables to poor dependents who called to pay their respects to the great at an early hour.
Nunc sportula primo
Limine parva sedet turbae rapienda togatae.
Juvenal, Sat. i. 95.
dying speech may even be stronger in the sense in which Mrs. Carter understands it, in my translation, where I have rendered one passage in the text by the words 'I have not dishonoured thee by my acts,' which she translates, 'as far as in me lay, I have not dishonoured thee;' which apparently means, 'as far as I could, I have not dishonoured thee.' The Latin translation 'quantum in me fuit,' seems rather ambiguous to me.
There is a general confession of sins in the prayer book of the Church of England, part of which Epictetus would not have rejected, I think. Of course the words which form the peculiar Christian character of the confession would have been unintelligible to him. It is a confession which all persons of all conditions are supposed to make. If all persons made the confession with sincerity, it ought to produce a corresponding behaviour and make men more ready to be kind to one another, for all who use it confess that they fail in their duty, and it ought to lower pride and banish arrogance from the behaviour of those who in wealth and condition are elevated above the multitude. But I have seen it somewhere said, I cannot remember where, but said in no friendly spirit to Christian prayer, that some men both priests and laymen prostrate themselves in humility before God and indemnify themselves by arrogance to man.
