BOOK I. XXIV. 10-16
go away again and observe more accurately, without this cowardice?
What am I to do, then?—What do you do when you disembark from a ship? You do not pick up the rudder, do you, or the oars? What do you pick up, then? Your own luggage, your oil-flask, your wallet. So now, if you are mindful of what is your own property, you will never lay claim to that which is another's. He[1] says to you, "Lay aside your broad scarlet hem"[2] Behold, the narrow hem.[3] "Lay aside this also." Behold, the plain toga.[4] "Lay aside your toga." Behold, I am naked. "But you arouse my envy." Well, then, take the whole of my paltry body. Do I any longer fear the man to whom I can throw my body? But he will not leave me as his heir. What then? Did I forget that none of these things is my own? How, then, do we call them "my own"? Merely as we call the bed in the inn "my own." If, then, the inn-keeper dies and leaves you the beds, you will have them; but if he leaves them to someone else, he will have them, and you will look for another bed. 15If, then, you do not find one, you will have to sleep on the ground; only do so with good courage, snoring and remembering that tragedies find a place among the rich and among kings and tyrants, but no poor man fills a tragic role except as a member of the chorus. Now the kings commence in a state of prosperity:
"Hang the palace with garlands";[5]
then, about the third or fourth act, comes—
"Alas, Cithaeron, why didst thou receive me?"[6]
- ↑ The reference must be to the Emperor Domitian, but Epictetus discreetly uses no name.
- ↑ Worn by senators.
- ↑ Worn by knights.
- ↑ Worn by ordinary citizens.
- ↑ From an unknown play.
- ↑ Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, 1390. Cithaeron was the mountain on which the infant Oedipus had been exposed to die.
