BOOK IV. VIII. 34-40
with him. 35Man, take a winter's training first;[1] look at your own choice, for fear it is like that of a dyspeptic, or a woman with the strange cravings of pregnancy. Practise first not to let men know who you are; keep your philosophy to yourself a little while. That is the way fruit is produced: the seed has to be buried and hidden for a season, and be grown by slow degrees, in order that it may come to perfection. But if it heads out before it produces the jointed stock, it never matures, it is from a garden of Adonis.[2] That is the kind of plant you are too; you have blossomed prematurely, and the winter will blight you utterly. See what the farmers say about their seeds, when the hot weather comes before its proper time. They are in utmost anxiety lest the seeds should grow insolently lush, and then but a single frost should lay hold of them and expose their weakness. Man, do you also beware; you have grown insolently lush, you have leaped forward to occupy some petty reputation before its due time; you think yourself somebody, fool that you are among fools; you will be bitten by the frost, or rather, you have already been bitten by the frost, down at the root, while your upper part still blooms a little, and for that reason you seem to be still alive and flourishing.[3] 40Allow us at least to ripen as nature wishes. Why do you expose us to the elements, why force us? We are not yet able to stand the open air. Let the root grow, next
- ↑ Suggesting a very serious effort. See note on I. 2, 32.
- ↑ Early spring house-gardens in honour of Adonis, where seeds were thickly planted in porous earthenware, sponges, and the like, sprouting luxuriantly, and of course quickly fading (cf. the reference to them in Isaiah, 1. 29: "Ye shall be confounded for the gardens that ye have chosen.") The expression became proverbial for incompleteness and early fading.
- ↑ This metaphor is so preposterous, for it is always the extremities of plants which are the first to be frostbitten, and not the protected roots, that one is inclined to ask if the text be sound. Clearly it is, since a whole series of corrections would have to be made in order to avoid the difficulty. Epictetus, a city dweller, probably knew little directly about the effects of frost on garden plants. The words "flower," "tree," and "herb" do not occur in his conversations at all. and even "plant" but rarely.—See note on IV. 11, 1.
