BOOK II. XIX. 14-19
have you formed your own judgement upon them? 15Show me how you are in the habit of conducting yourself in a storm on board ship. Do you bear in mind this logical distinction between good and evil when the sail crackles, and you have screamed and some fellow-passenger, untimely humorous, comes up and says, "Tell me, I beseech you by the gods, just what you were saying a little while ago. Is it a vice to suffer shipwreck? Is there any vice in that?" Will you not pick up a piece of wood and cudgel him? "What have we to do with you, fellow? We are perishing and you come and crack jokes!" And if Caesar sends for you to answer an accusation, do you bear in mind this distinction? Suppose someone approaches you when you are going in pale and trembling, and says, "Why are you trembling, fellow? What is the affair that concerns you? Does Caesar inside the palace bestow virtue and vice upon those who appear before him?" "Why do you also make mock of me and add to my other ills?" "But yet, philosopher, tell me, why are you trembling? Is not the danger death, or prison, or bodily pain, or exile, or disrepute? Why, what else can it be? Is it a vice at all, or anything that shares in vice? What was it, then, that you used to call these things?" "What have I to do with you, fellow? My own evils are enough for me" And in that you are right. For your own evils art enough for you—your baseness, your cowardice, the bragging that you indulged in when you were sitting in the lecture room. Why did you pride yourself upon things that were not your own? Why did you call yourself a Stoic?
