t insult me. You know not the
miseries I suffer; there is no sleep for me; but one comes and says
that Caesar is already awake; another, that he is just going out. Then
follow perturbations, then cares." Well, and when did you use to sup
the more pleasantly--formerly, or now? Hear what he says about this
too. When he is not invited, he is distracted; and if he is, he sups
like a slave with his master, solicitous all the while not to say or
do anything foolish. And what think you? Is he afraid of being whipt
like a slave! No such easy penalty. No; but rather, as becomes so
great a man, Caesar's friend, of losing his head. And when did you
bathe the more quietly; when did you perform your exercises the more
at your leisure; in short, which life would you rather wish to
live--your present, or the former? I could swear there is no one so
stupid and insensible as not to deplore his miseries, in proportion as
he is the more the friend of Caesar.

Since, then, neither they who are called kings nor the friends of
kings live as they like, who, then, after all, is free?...

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 110: From the "Discourses." Translated by Thomas Wentworth
Higginson. Copyright, 1865 and 1890, by Little, Brown & Co. Epictetus
has been valued not alone as an exposition of the Stoic philosophy,
but as a specimen of Greek of the later or Silver Age. Marcus
Aurelius, who in a later generation wrote in Greek himself, is said to
have ranked Epictetus with Socrates as a teacher. Origen, the early
Christian father, asserted that his writings had been of more value to
the world's morals than those of Plato.]

II

OF FRIENDSHIP[111]

To whatever objects a person devotes his attention, these objects he
probably loves. Do men ever devote their attention, then, to [what
they think] evils? By no means. Or even to things indifferent? No, nor
this. It remains, then, that good must be the sole object of their
attention; and if of their attention, of their love too. Whoever,
therefore, understands good, is capable likewise of love; and he who
can not distinguish good from evil, and things indifferent from both,
how is it possible that he can love? The wise person alone, then, is
capable of loving.

"How so? I am not this wise person, yet I love my child."

I protest it surprizes me that you should, in the first place, confess
yourself unwise. For in what are you deficient? Have not you the use
of your senses? Do you not distinguish