BOOK III. V. 14-VI. 2
in following the course of my own improvement."[1] 15In what respect; in little philosophic phrases?—Man, hold your tongue.—In little philosophic theories, then?—What are you doing?—Well, I don't see anything else that the philosophers spend their time on.—Is it nothing in your eyes never to bring accusation against anyone, be it God or man? Never to blame anyone? Always to wear the same expression on one's face, whether one is coming out or going in?[2] These are the things which Socrates knew, and yet he never said that he either knew or taught anything. But if someone called for little philosophic phrases or theories, he used to take him over to Protagoras or Hippias. It was just as though someone had come to him for fresh vegetables, and he would have taken him over to the market gardener. Who, then, among you makes this purpose of Socrates the purpose of his own life? Why, if you did, you would have been glad even to be ill, and to go hungry, and to die. If any one of you was ever in love with a pretty wench, he knows that what I say is true.
CHAPTER VI
Some scattered sayings
When someone asked how it was that, despite the greater amount of work which was done nowadays in logic, there was more progress made in former times, Epictetus replied. On what has labour been expended in our time, and in what was the progress greater in those days? For in that upon
- ↑ The closest parallels from Xenophon (Mem. I. 6. 8 and 14) and Plato (Prot. 318 A) express the idea so differently that we have here probably (through Chrysippus) a fragment from one of the lost Socratic dialogues, of which there was a large body.
- ↑ See also about Socrates in Aelian, Var. Hist. 9, 7.
