BOOK I. IX. 27-X. 1
terms in his behalf. But when he had read the letter he handed it back to me, and said, "I wanted your help, not your pity; my plight is not an evil one." So likewise Rufus was wont to say, to test me, "Your master[1] is going to do such-and-such a thing to you." 30And when I would say in answer. "'Tis but the lot of man," he would reply. "What then? Am I to go on and petition him, when I can get the same result from you?"[2] For, in fact, it is foolish and superfluous to try to obtain from another that which one can get from oneself. Since, therefore, I am able to get greatness of soul and nobility of character from myself, am I to get a farm, and money, or some office, from you? Far from it! I will not be so unaware of what I myself possess. But when a man is cowardly and abject, what else can one possibly do but write letters in his behalf as we do in behalf of a corpse: "Please to grant us the carcase of so-and-so and a pint of paltry blood?"[3] For really, such a person is but a carcase and a pint of paltry blood, and nothing more. But if he were anything more he would perceive that one man is not unfortunate because of another.
CHAPTER X
To those who have set their hearts on preferment at Rome
If we philosophers had applied ourselves to our own work as zealously as the old men at Rome
- ↑ In his youth Epictetus had been a slave.
- ↑ The thought seems to be: If the punishment can be humanly borne, I need not petition your master to remit it, for you have within yourself the power to endure it.
- ↑ As when a friend might ask for the body of an executed criminal.
