BOOK IV. X. 34-XI. 2
If the pot in which your meat used to be boiled gets broken, do you have to die of hunger because you do not have your accustomed pot? Won't you send out and buy a new one to take its place? He says,
35Ill no greater than this could befall me.[1]
Why, is this what you call an ill? And then, forbearing to get rid of it, do you blame your mother, because she did not foretell it to you, so that you might continue to lament from that time forth?
What do you men think? Did not Homer compose this in order for us to see that there is nothing to prevent the persons of highest birth, of greatest strength, of most handsome appearance, from being most miserable and wretched, when they do not hold the right kind of judgements?
CHAPTER XI
Of cleanliness
Some people raise the question whether the social instinct is a necessary element in the nature of man; nevertheless, even these people, as it seems to me, would not question that the instinct of cleanliness is most assuredly a necessary element, and that man is distinguished from the animals by this quality if by anything.[2] When, therefore, we see some other animal cleaning itself, we are in the habit of saying in surprise that it is acting "like a human
- ↑ Homer, Iliad, XIX. 321.
- ↑ The generalization is somewhat hasty. Many animals, like cats (and the felidae in general), moles, most birds, snakes, etc., are distinctly more cleanly than any but the most civilized men. Epictetus was clearly not strong in natural history. Cf. notes on II. 24, 16; IV. 8, 39; IV. 11, 32, and Ench. 33, 16.
