ε. But it is right too that every man should pour libations, and offer sacrifices, and offer firstfruits according to the customs of his fathers, purely, and not supinely, nor negligently, nor indeed scantily, yet not beyond his means.
XXXII.α.When you go to inquire of an oracle, remember that though you do not know beforehand what the event will be (for this very thing is what you have come to learn from the seer), yet of what nature it must be (if you are a philosopher), you knew already when you came. For if it be of those things which do not depend upon ourselves, it follows of necessity that it can be neither good nor evil.
β. When you go then to the seer, bring with you neither desire nor aversion, and approach him, not with trembling, but with the full assurance that all events are indifferent, and nothing to you, and
the Biblical expressions 'whose God is their belly,' 'worshippers of tables.' In Disc. i. 27, Epictetus says, 'Whenever religion and profit do not coincide, religion is doomed.' This looks like an acquiescence in that ethical theory which we mostly think of in connection with his antagonists, the Epicureans, that Happiness is the raison d'être of morality.
