BOOK IV. VI. 28-33
rule.—Yes, in what you greatly concern yourself with, that is, judgements; but in that with which other men have concerned themselves more greatly than you have, give place to them. It is as though, because you have correct judgements, you insisted that you ought in archery to hit the mark better than the archers, or to surpass the smiths at their trade. Drop, therefore, your earnestness about judgements, and concern yourself with the things which you wish to acquire, and then lament if you do not succeed, for you have a right to do that. 30But as it is, you claim to be intent upon other things, to care for other things, and there is wisdom in what common people say, "One serious business has no partnership with another."[1] One man gets up at early dawn and looks for someone of the household of Caesar[† 1] to salute, someone to whom he may make a pleasant speech, to whom he may send a present, how he may please the dancer, how he may gratify one person by maliciously disparaging another. When he prays, he prays for these objects, when he sacrifices, he sacrifices for these objects. The word of Pythagoras,[2]
Also allow not sleep to draw nigh to your languorous eyelids,
he has wrested to apply here. "'Where did I go wrong—'[3] in matters of flattery? 'What did I do?' Can it be that I acted as a free man, or as a man of noble character?" And if he find an instance of the sort, he censures and accuses himself: "Why, what
- ↑ Cf. IV. 10, 24.
- ↑ Golden Verses, 40. See III. 10, 2.
- ↑ The single quotation-marks enclose famous phrases from the Golden Verses, which Epictetus, with bitter irony, represents such a self-seeker as employing in a sense appropriate to his own contemptible behaviour.
- ↑ τοῦ Καίσαρος added by Wolf; ἐξιόντα suggested by Reiske.
