BOOK III. XII. 10-15
arrogant, to submit when you are reviled, not to be disturbed when you are insulted. then you will make such progress, that, even if someone strikes you, you will say to yourself, "Imagine that you have thrown your arms about a statue." Next train yourself to use wine with discretion, not with a view to heavy drinking (for there are some clumsy fools who practise with this in mind), but first for the purpose of achieving abstention from wine, and keeping your hands off a wench, or a sweet-cake. And then some day, if the occasion for a test really comes, you will enter the lists at a proper time for the sake of discovering whether your sense-impressions still overcome you just as they did before. But first of all flee far away from the things that are too strong for you. It is not a fair match that, between a pretty wench and a young beginner in philosophy. "A pot," as they say, "and a stone do not go together."[1]
After your desire and your aversion the next topic[2] has to do with your choice and refusal. Here the object is to be obedient to reason, not to choose or to refuse at the wrong time, or the wrong place, or contrary to some other similar propriety.
The third topic has to do with cases of assent; it is concerned with the things that are plausible and attractive. 15For, just as Socrates used to tell us not to live a life unsubjected to examination,[3] so we ought not to accept a sense-impression unsubjected to examination, but should say, "Wait, allow me to see who you are and whence you come"[4] (just as the night-watch say, "Show me your
- ↑ Compare the fable about the earthenware pot and the bronze jar in Babrius 193 (Crusius) = Aesop 422 (Halm), Avianus 11, etc.
- ↑ Upon this division of the field of philosophy, which appears to be peculiar to Epictetus, see note on III. 2, 1.
- ↑ See note on I. 26, 18.
- ↑ Compare II. 18, 24.
