Discourses - Epictetus (amazing books to read .txt) 📗

truth, the way which the tyrant sends you is shorter. A tyrant never killed a man in six months: but a fever is often a year about it. All these things are only sound and the noise of empty names.

“I am in danger of my life from Caesar.”255 And am not I in danger who dwell in Nicopolis, where there are so many earthquakes: and when you are crossing the Adriatic, what hazard do you run? Is it not the hazard of your life? “But I am in danger also as to opinion.” Do you mean your own? how? For who can compel you to have any opinion which you do not choose? But is it as to another man’s opinion? and what kind of danger is yours, if others have false opinions? “But I am in danger of being banished.” What is it to be banished? To be somewhere else than at Rome? “Yes: what then if I should be sent to Gyara?”256 If that suits you, you will go there; but if it does not, you can go to another place instead of Gyara, whither he also will go, who sends you to Gyara, whether he choose or not. Why then do you go up to Rome as if it were something great? It is not worth all this preparation, that an ingenuous youth should say, “It was not worthwhile to have heard so much and to have written so much and to have sat so long by the side of an old man who is not worth much.” Only remember that division by which your own and not your own are distinguished: never claim anything which belongs to others. A tribunal and a prison are each a place, one high and the other low; but the will can be maintained equal, if you choose to maintain it equal in each. And we shall then be imitators of Socrates, when we are able to write paeans in prison.257 But in our present disposition, consider if we could endure in prison another person saying to us: Would you like me to read Paeans to you? “Why do you trouble me? do you not know the evils which hold me? Can I in such circumstances (listen to paeans)?” What circumstances? “I am going to die.” And will other men be immortal?

VII How We Ought to Use Divination

Through an unreasonable regard to divination many of us omit many duties.258 For what more can the diviner see than death or danger or disease, or generally things of that kind? If then I must expose myself to danger for a friend, and if it is my duty even to die for him, what need have I then for divination? Have I not within me a diviner who has told me the nature of good and of evil, and has explained to me the signs (or marks) of both? What need have I then to consult the viscera of victims or the flight of birds, and why do I submit when he says, “It is for your interest?” For does he know what is for my interest, does he know what is good; and as he has learned the signs of the viscera, has he also learned the signs of good and evil? For if he knows the signs of these, he knows the signs both of the beautiful and of the ugly, and of the just and of the unjust. Do you tell me, man, what is the thing which is signified for me: is it life or death, poverty or wealth? But whether these things are for my interest or whether they are not, I do not intend to ask you. Why don’t you give your opinion on matters of grammar, and why do you give it here about things on which we are all in error and disputing with one another?259 The woman therefore, who intended to send by a vessel a month’s provisions to Gratilla260 in her banishment, made a good answer to him who said that Domitian would seize what she sent, “I would rather,” she replied, “that Domitian should seize all than that I should not send it.”

What then leads us to frequent use of divination? Cowardice, the dread of what will happen. This is the reason why we flatter the diviners. Pray, master, shall I succeed to the property of my father? “Let us see: let us sacrifice on the occasion.” Yes, master, as fortune chooses. When he has said, “You shall succeed to the inheritance,” we thank him as if we received the inheritance from him. The consequence is that they play upon us.261

What then should we do? We ought to come (to divination) without desire or aversion, as the wayfarer asks of the man whom he meets which of two roads leads (to his journey’s end), without any desire for that which leads to the right rather than to the left, for he has no wish to go by any road except the road which leads (to his end). In the same way ought we to come to God also as a guide; as we use our eyes, not asking them to show us rather such things as we wish, but receiving the appearances of things such as the eyes present them to us. But now we trembling take the augur (bird interpreter)262 by the hand, and while we invoke God we entreat the augur, and say “Master have mercy on me;263 suffer me to come safe out of this difficulty.” Wretch, would you have then anything other than what is best? Is there then anything better than what pleases God? Why do you, as far as is in your power, corrupt your judge and lead astray your adviser?

VIII What Is the