By no means [ask that]: but say rather *, Ought not he to be destroyed, who errs and is deceived in things of the greatest importance; blinded, not in the Sight that distinguishes White from Black, but in the Judgment, that distinguishes Good from Evil?" By stating your question thus, you see how inhuman it is; and just as if you would say, "Ought not this blind, or that deaf man, to be destroyed?" For, if the greatest Hurt be a deprivation of the most valuable things, and the most valuable thing to every one is a right Judgment in chusing; when any one is deprived of this, why, after all, are you angry? You ought not to be affected, Man, contrary to Nature, by the ills of another. Pity† him rather. Do not be angry; nor say, as many do, What! shall these execrable and odious wretches dare to act thus? Whence have you so suddenly learnt Wisdom? Because we admire those Things which such people

Several Words are wanting in different Places of some of the following Lines of the Greek; which are conjecturally sup plied in the Translation from Mr. Upton's Version.

† See Gal. vi. 1. and many other Parts of the New Testa ment, in which all the Humanity and Tenderness prescribed by the Stoics are enjoined; and the dangerous Notions, on which they found them, are avoided,

take

take from us. Do not admire your Clothes, and you will not be angry with the Thief. Do not admire the Beauty of your Wife, and you will not be angry with an Adulterer. Know, that a Thief and an Adulterer have no place in the things that are properly your own: but in those that belong to others; and which are not in your power. If you give up these things, and look upon them as nothing, with whom will you any longer be angry? But, while you admire them, be angry with yourself, rather than with others. Consider only you have a fine Suit of Clothes; your Neighbour has not. You have a Casement; you want to air them. He knows not in what the Good of Man consists; but imagines it is in a fine Suit of Clothes: the very Thing which you imagine too. Must not he, then, of course, come and take them away? When you show a Cake to greedy people, and are devouring it all yourself; would not you have them snatch it from you? Do not provoke them. Do not have a Casement. Do not air your Clothes. I, too, the other day, had an Iron Lamp burning before my household Deities. Hearing a noise at the window, I ran. I found my Lamp was stolen. I considered,

sidered, that he who took it away, did nothing unaccountable. What then? To-morrow, says I, you shall find an Earthen one : for a Man loses only what he hath. I have lost my Coat. Aye: because you had a Coat. I have a pain in my Head. Why, can you have a pain in your Horns? Why, then, are you out of humour? For Loss and Pain can be only of such Things as are possessed.

§. 2. But the Tyrant will chain-What? A Leg. He will take away-What? A Head. -What is there, then, that he can neither chain, nor take away? The Will, and Choice. Hence the advice of the Ancients-Know thyself.

What ought to be done, then?

Exercise yourself, for Heaven's sake, in little Things; and thence proceed to greater. "I have a pain in Head.". my Do not cry, alas! "I have a pain in my Ear." Do not cry, alas! I do not say, you may not groan; but do not groan inwardly: or, if your Servant is a long while in bringing you something to bind your Head, do not bawl, and distort yourself: and say, " Every

*This alludes to a famous Quibble among the Stoics. What you have not lost, you have: but you have not lost a l'air of Ilorus; therefore you have a Pair of Horns, UPTON.

body

body hates me." For, who would not hate such a one?

3. Relying for the future on these principles, walk upright, and free; not trusting to Bulk of Body, like a Wrestler: for one should not be unconquerable in the Sense that an Ass is.

certs.

Who then is unconquerable He whom nothing, independent on Choice, disconThen I run over every circumstance, and consider [such a one in each. As they say] of an athletic champion. He has been victorious in the first Encounter: What will he do in the Second? What, if the Heat should be excessive? What, if he were to appear at Olympia? So I say in this case. What, if you throw Money in his way? He will despise it. What, if a Girl? What, if in the dark? What, if he be tried by popular Fame, Calumny, Praise, Death? He is able to overcome them all. What, then, if he be placed in the Heat, or in the Rain*? What,

* Mr. Upton observes, That Epictetus here applies to the wise Man, what he had just been saying of the athletic Champion: and he proposes a Change in one Word; by which, instead of the Heat, or the Rain, the Translation will be, in a Fever, or in Drink. For the Stoics held their wise Man to be a perfect Master of himself in all these Circumstances.

The

What, if he be hypochondriac, or asleep? [Just the same.] This is my unconquerable athletic champion.

CHAP. XIX.

Of the Behaviour to be observed towards Tyrants.

§. 1. WHEN a person is possessed of some

either real or imaginary Superiority, unless he hath been well instructed, he will necessarily be puffed up with it. A Tyrant, for instance, says; "I am supreme over all."And what can you do for Me? Can you exempt my Desires from Disappointment? How should you? For do you never incur your own Aversions? Are your own Puṛ

1

The Passages which Mr. Upton produces from L. ii. c. 17. towards the End, and L. iii. c. 2. towards the Beginning, makes the Conjecture of avausvos for suevos as probable as it is ingenious. But yet the ovv av xavμay one would imagine to have crept in by a Repetition of the Transcriber, from the Description, a few Lines before; as it is scarcely probable, that the same Word should be used by Epictetus in two different Senses, at so small a Distance, in the same Discourse.