BOOK III. I. 20-24
my fellow-citizens, inasmuch as you are nearer akin to me."[1] Are you so inquisitive, O Socrates, and meddlesome? And why do you care what we are about? "Why, what is that you are saying? You are my partner and kinsman, and yet you neglect yourself and provide the State with a bad citizen, and your kin with a bad kinsman, and your neighbours with a bad neighbour." "Well, who are you?" Here it is a bold thing to say, "I am he who must needs take interest in men." For no ordinary ox dares to withstand the lion himself;[2] but if the bull comes up and withstands him, say to the bull, if you think fit, "But who are you?" and "What do you care?" Man, in every species nature produces some superior individual, among cattle, dogs, bees, horses. Pray do not say to the superior individual, "Well, then, who are you?" Or if you do, it will get a voice from somewhere and reply to you, "I am the same sort of thing as red in a mantle;[3] do not expect me to resemble the rest, and do not blame my[† 1] nature[4] because it has made me different from the rest."
What follows? Am I that kind of person? Impossible. Are you, indeed, the kind of person to listen to the truth? I would that you were! But nevertheless, since somehow or other I have been condemned to wear a grey beard and a rough cloak,[5] and you are coming to me as to a philosopher, I shall not treat you cruelly, nor as though I despaired of
- ↑ A free paraphrase of the Apology, 29 C, E, and 30 A. Compare also I. 9, 23.
- ↑ Compare I. 2, 30.
- ↑ Compare I. 2, 17 (and note, where read "bright red") and 22; the reference is to the stripe in the toga praetexta.
- ↑ See critical note.
- ↑ External symbols of a philosopher.
- ↑ Deleted by Kronenberg, and "nature" rather than "my nature" would seem to be more logical here (cf. Grant's note on Aristotle's Ethics, 2.1.3). But μου is supported by the precisely similar σου of § 30, which is if anything even more illogical. In the original remark of Diogenes, whom Epictetus is clearly quoting in § 30 (see the note at that point), ἐγκαλεῖν τῇ φύσει is used as it is normally in Greek. Apparently we have in these two locutions a form of expression peculiar to Epictetus.
