Discourses 4.10 ¶4 — Epictetus

Epictetus, Discourses 4.10 ¶4

When a man has these things before his eyes, does he keep awake and turn hither and thither? What would he have, or what does he regret, Patroclus or Antilochus or Menelaus? For when did he suppose that any of his friends was immortal, and when had he not before his eyes that on the morrow or the day after he or his friend must die? “Yes,” he says, “but I thought that he would survive me and bring up my son.”—You were a fool for that reason, and you were thinking of what was uncertain. Why then do you not blame yourself, and sit crying like girls?—“But he used to set my food before me.”—Because he was alive, you fool, but now he cannot: but Automedon will set it before you, and if Automedon also dies, you will find another. But if the pot in which your meat was cooked should be broken, must you die of hunger because you have not the pot which you are accustomed to? Do you not send and buy a new pot? He says: No greater ill than this could fall on me. Why is this your ill? Do you then instead of removing it blame your mother (Thetis) for not foretelling it to you that you might continue grieving from that time? What do you think? do you not suppose that Homer wrote this that we may learn that those of noblest birth, the strongest and the richest, the most handsome, when they have not the opinions which they ought to have, are not prevented from being most wretched and unfortunate?