Encheiridion — Epictetus
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
Cbe discourses of JEpictetus 105 explain them also to others? Man, you have had a fight in the house with a poor slave, you have turned the family upside down, you have frightened the neighbors, and you come to me as if you were a wise man, and you take your seat and judge how I have explained some word, and how I have babbled whatever came into my head.
You come full of envy, and humbled, because you bring nothing from home ; and you sit during the discussion thinking of nothing else than how your father is disposed towards you and your brother. What are they saying about me there ? now they think that I am improving, and are saying, He will return with all knowledge.
I wish I could learn everything before I return ; but much labor is necessary, and no one sends me anything, and the baths at Nicopolis are dirty ; everything is bad at home, and bad here. On Friendship. — What a man applies himself to earnestly, that he naturally loves. Do men then apply themselves earnestly to the things which are bad ? By no means. Well, do they apply themselves to things which in no way concern themselves ?
Not to these either. It remains then that they employ themselves earnestly only about things which are good ; and if they are earnestly employed about things, to6 xibe Discourses of Bptctetus they love such things also. Whoever then understands what is good can also know how to love ; but he who cannot distinguish good from bad, and things which are neither good nor bad from both, how can he possess the power of loving? To love, then, is only in the power of the wise. For universally, be not deceived, every animal is attached to nothing so much as to its own interest.
Whatever then appears to it an impediment to this interest, whether this be a brother, or a father, or a child, or beloved, or lover, it hates, spurns, curses ; for its nature is to love nothing so much as its own interest : this is father, and brother, and kinsman, and country, and God.
When then the gods appear to us to be an impediment to this, we abuse them and throw down their statues and burn their temples, as Alexander ordered the temples of ^sculapius to be burned when his dear friend died.
For this reason, if a man put in the same place his interest, sanctity, goodness, and country, and parents, and friends, all these are secured ; but if he puts in one place his interest, in another his friends, and his country and his kinsmen and justice itself, all these give way, being borne down by the weight of interest. For where the I and the Mine are
Gbe discourses of jEptctetus 107 placed, to that place of necessity the animal inclines ; if in the flesh, there is the ruling power ; if in the will, it is there ; and if it is in externals, it is there.
If then I am there where my will is, then only shall I be a friend such as I ought to be, and son, and father ; for this will be my interest, to maintain the character of fidelity, of modesty, of patience, of abstinence, of active co-operation, of observing my relations (towards all).
But if I put myself in one place, and honesty in another, then the doctrine of Epicurus becomes strong, which asserts either that there is no honesty or it is that which opinion holds to be honest (virtuous). It was through this ignorance that the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians quarrelled, and the Thebans with both ; and the great king quarrelled with Hellas, and the Macedonians with both ; and the Romans with the Getae.
And still earlier the Trojan war happened for these reasons. Alexander was the guest of Menelaus, and if any man had seen their friendly disposition, he would not have believed any one who said that they were not friends. But there was cast between them (as between dogs) a bit of meat, a handsome woman, and about her war arose. And now when you see brothers to be friends appearing to have one mind, do not conclude from this anything
No commentary for this page under the selected tracks.
There is commentary on page 1.