Discourses 2.6 ¶3 — Epictetus

Epictetus, Discourses 2.6 ¶3

“I am in danger of my life from Caesar.” And am not I in danger who dwell in Nicopolis, where there are so many earthquakes: and when you are crossing the Adriatic, what hazard do you run? Is it not the hazard of your life? “But I am in danger also as to opinion.” Do you mean your own? how? For who can compel you to have any opinion which you do not choose? But is it as to another man’s opinion? and what kind of danger is yours, if others have false opinions? “But I am in danger of being banished.” What is it to be banished? To be somewhere else than at Rome? “Yes: what then if I should be sent to Gyara?” If that suits you, you will go there; but if it does not, you can go to another place instead of Gyara, whither he also will go, who sends you to Gyara, whether he choose or not. Why then do you go up to Rome as if it were something great? It is not worth all this preparation, that an ingenuous youth should say, “It was not worthwhile to have heard so much and to have written so much and to have sat so long by the side of an old man who is not worth much.” Only remember that division by which your own and not your own are distinguished: never claim anything which belongs to others. A tribunal and a prison are each a place, one high and the other low; but the will can be maintained equal, if you choose to maintain it equal in each. And we shall then be imitators of Socrates, when we are able to write paeans in prison. But in our present disposition, consider if we could endure in prison another person saying to us: Would you like me to read Paeans to you? “Why do you trouble me? do you not know the evils which hold me? Can I in such circumstances (listen to paeans)?” What circumstances? “I am going to die.” And will other men be immortal?