Discourses 3.23 ¶3 — Epictetus

Epictetus, Discourses 3.23 ¶3

You then, who are in a wretched plight and gaping after applause and counting your auditors, do you intend to be useful to others? “Today many more attended my discourse. Yes, many; we suppose five hundred.” That is nothing; suppose that there were a thousand—Dion never had so many hearers—How could he?—And they understand what is said beautifully. What is fine, master, can move even a stone.—See, these are the words of a philosopher. This is the disposition of a man who will do good to others; here is a man who has listened to discourses, who has read what is written about Socrates as Socratic, not as the compositions of Lysias and Isocrates. “‘I have often wondered by what arguments…’ Not so, but ‘by what argument’: this is more exact than that.”—What, have you read the words at all in a different way from that in which you read little odes? For if you read them as you ought, you would not have been attending to such matters, but you would rather have been looking to these words: “Anytus and Melitus are able to kill me, but they cannot harm me:” “and I am always of such a disposition as to pay regard to nothing of my own except to the reason which on inquiry seems to me the best.” Hence who ever heard Socrates say, “I know something and I teach;” but he used to send different people to different teachers. Therefore they used to come to him and ask to be introduced to philosophers by him; and he would take them and recommend them.—Not so; but as he accompanied them he would say, “Hear me today discoursing in the house of Quadratus.” Why should I hear you? Do you wish to show me that you put words together cleverly? You put them together, man; and what good will it do you? “But only praise me.” What do you mean by praising? “Say to me, admirable, wonderful.” Well, I say so. But if that is praise, whatever it is which philosophers mean by the name (κατηγορία) of good, what have I to praise in you? If it is good to speak well, teach me, and I will praise you.—“What then? ought a man to listen to such things without pleasure?”—I hope not. For my part I do not listen even to a lute-player without pleasure. Must I then for this reason stand and play the lute? Hear what Socrates says: “Nor would it be seemly for a man of my age, like a young man composing addresses, to appear before you.” Like a young man, he says. For in truth this small art is an elegant thing, to select words, and to put them together, and to come forward and gracefully to read them or to speak, and while he is reading to say, “There are not many who can do these things,” I swear by all that you value.