BOOK IV. I. 138-145
school; away with those sayings of pedants and fools!" That is how a friend is condemned on the testimony of a philosopher,[1] that is how a philosopher turns parasite, that is how he hires himself out for money, that is how at a meeting of the senate a man does not say what he thinks, while within his breast his judgement shouts loudly, 140no cold and miserable remnant suspended from idle argumentations as by a hair, but a strong and serviceable judgement, and familiar with its business by having been trained in action. Watch yourself, and see how you take the word—I do not say the word that your child is dead; how could you possibly bear that?—but the word that your oil is spilled, or your wine drunk up. Well might someone stand over you, when you are in this excited condition, and say simply, "Philosopher, you talk differently in the school; why are you deceiving us? Why, when you are a worm, do you claim that you are a man?" I should like to stand over one of these philosophers when he is engaged in sexual intercourse, so as to see how he exerts himself, what manner of words he utters, whether he remembers his own name, or the arguments that he hears, or repeats, or reads!
And what has all this to do with freedom?—Nay, nothing but all this has to do with freedom, whether you rich people so wish or not.—145And what is your witness to this?—Why, what else but you yourselves who have this mighty master,[2] and live at his nod and gesture, who faint away if he but look at one of you with a scowl on his face, paying court to the
- ↑ Possibly an allusion to Egnatius Celer, who accused his friend, Barea Soranus, in the reign of Nero, A.D. 66, when Epictetus was a boy. See Tacitus, Annals, 16, 32, and Juvenal, 3, 116f.
- ↑ i.e., the Emperor.
