BOOK IV. VI. 18-23
activities of men? Yet you are concerned whether the rest of mankind pity you?—Yes, but I do not deserve to be pitied.—And so you are pained at that? And is the man who is pained worthy of pity?—Yes.—How, then, do you fail to deserve pity after all? By the very emotion which you feel concerning pity you make yourself worthy of pity. 20What, then, says Antisthenes? Have you never heard? "It is the lot of a king, O Cyrus, to do well, but to be ill spoken of."[1] My head is perfectly sound and yet everybody thinks I have a headache. What do I care? I have no fever, and yet everybody sympathizes with me as though I had: "Poor fellow, you have had a fever for ever so long." I draw a long face too, and say, "Yes, it truly is a long time that I have been in a bad way." "What is going to happen, then?" As God will, I reply, and at the same time I smile quietly to myself at those who are pitying me.
What, then, prevents me from doing the same thing in my moral life also? I am poor, but I have a correct judgement about poverty. Why, then, am I concerned, if men pity me for my poverty? I do not hold office, while others do. But I have the right opinion about holding office and not holding it. Let those who pity me look to it,[2] but as for myself, I am neither hungry, nor thirsty, nor cold, but from their own hunger and thirst they think I too am hungry and thirsty. What, then, am I to do for them? Shall I go about and make proclamation, and say, "Men, be not deceived, it is well with me.
- ↑ So also Marcus Aurelius, 7, 36; and cf. Diogenes Laertius, 6, 3.
- ↑ As in IV. 7, 23, and 8, 24, and Acts xviii. 15. Probably ὄψει, in S, I. 4, 13, can be defended on the analogy of these other cases.
