FRAGMENTS
22
From Agrippinus[1]
When Agrippinus was governor,[2] he used to try to persuade the persons whom he sentenced that it was proper for them to be sentenced. "For," he would say, "it is not as an enemy or as a brigand that I record my vote against them, but as a curator and guardian; just as also the physician encourages the man upon whom he is operating, and persuades him to submit to the operation."
23
From Epictetus
Nature is wonderful, and, as Xenophon[3] says, "fond of her creatures." At all events we love and tend our body, the most unpleasant and dirtiest thing that there is; why, if we had had to tend our neighbour's body for no more than five days, we could not have endured it. Just consider what a nuisance it is to get up in the morning and brush some other person's teeth, and then after attending to a call of nature to wash those parts. Truly it is wonderful to love a thing for which we perform so many services every day. I stuff this bag here;[4] and then I empty it; what is more tiresome? But I must serve God. For that reason I remain, and endure to wash this miserable paltry body, and to
- ↑ Ascribed to Epictetus by Gaisford and Asmus, but there is some doubt about the ascription, for the resemblance with I. 18 is not conclusive.
- ↑ He was proconsul of Crete and Cyrenaica under Claudius. For all that is known about him see Prosopographia Imperii Romani, III. p. 4, No. 16.
- ↑ Memorabilia, I. 4, 7, where, however, the expression is used of a "wise Creator.'
- ↑ Pointing to his belly.
