Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 1 Oldfather 1925.djvu/121

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BOOK I. X. 8-13

I must read over.^[1] Then forthwith I say to myself: "And yet what difference does it really make to me how so-and-so reads? The first thing is that I get my sleep." Even so, in what are the occupations of those other men comparable to ours? If you observe what they do, you will see. For what else do they do but all day long cast up accounts, dispute, consult about a bit of grain, a bit of land, or similar matters of profit? ¹⁰Is it, then, much the same thing to receive a little petition from someone and read: "I beseech you to allow me to export a small quantity of grain," and this one: "I beseech you to learn from Chrysippus what is the administration of the universe, and what place therein the rational animal has; and consider also who you are, and what is the nature of your good and evil"? Is this like that? And does it demand the like kind of study? And is it in the same way shameful to neglect the one and the other? What then? Is it we philosophers alone who take things easily and drowse? No, it is you young men far sooner. For, look you, we old men, when we see young men playing, are eager to join in the play ourselves. And much more, if I saw them wide-awake and eager to share in our studies, should I be eager to join, myself, in their serious pursuits.

↑ The passage is somewhat obscure, because the precise expression employed here occurs elsewhere only in Ench. 49. Apparently Epictetus read over, or made special preparation upon a certain text, before meeting his pupils. In class then he would have a pupil read and interpret an assignment, somewhat what as in our "recitation," and follow that by a reading and exposition of his own (ἐπαναγνῶναι), which was intended to set everything straight and put on the finishing touches. See Schweighäuser's note and especially Ivo Bruns, De Schola Epicteti (1897), 8 f. By changing μέ to μοί, as Capps suggests, a satisfactory sense is secured, i.e., "what pupil must read to me," but the ἐπί in the compound verb would thus be left without any particular meaning, and perhaps it is not necessary to emend.

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[p77a-1] The passage is somewhat obscure, because the precise expression employed here occurs elsewhere only in Ench. 49. Apparently Epictetus read over, or made special preparation upon a certain text, before meeting his pupils. In class then he would have a pupil read and interpret an assignment, somewhat what as in our "recitation," and follow that by a reading and exposition of his own (ἐπαναγνῶναι), which was intended to set everything straight and put on the finishing touches. See Schweighäuser's note and especially Ivo Bruns, De Schola Epicteti (1897), 8 f. By changing μέ to μοί, as Capps suggests, a satisfactory sense is secured, i.e., "what pupil must read to me," but the ἐπί in the compound verb would thus be left without any particular meaning, and perhaps it is not necessary to emend.

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