and all other things for display, and to show that you are a
man honored by the great, and to try to sup at their houses, or to be
supposed to sup there, and as to your person to employ some mean arts,
that you may appear to be more handsome and nobler than you are. These
things you must contrive, if you choose to go by the second path in
order not to be pitied. But the first way is both impracticable and
long, to attempt the very thing which Zeus has not been able to do, to
convince all men what things are good and bad. Is this power given to
you? This only is given to you, to convince yourself; and you have not
convinced yourself. Then I ask you, do you attempt to persuade other
men? and who has lived so long with you as you with yourself? and who
has so much power of convincing you as you have of convincing yourself;
and who is better disposed and nearer to you than you are to yourself?
How then have you not yet convinced yourself in order to learn? At
present are not things upside down? Is this what you have been earnest
about doing, to learn to be free from grief and free from disturbance,
and not to be humbled (abject), and to be free? Have you not heard then
that there is only one way which leads to this end, to give up (dismiss)
the things which do not depend on the will, to withdraw from them, and
to admit that they belong to others? For another man then to have an
opinion about you, of what kind is it? It is a thing independent of the
will--Then is it nothing to you? It is nothing. When then you are still
vexed at this and disturbed, do you think that you are convinced about
good and evil?

* * * * *

ON FREEDOM FROM FEAR.--What makes the tyrant formidable? The guards, you
say, and their swords, and the men of the bedchamber, and those who
exclude them who would enter. Why then if you bring a boy (child) to the
tyrant when he is with his guards, is he not afraid; or is it because
the child does not understand these things? If then any man does
understand what guards are and that they have swords, and comes to the
tyrant for this very purpose because he wishes to die on account of some
circumstance and seeks to die easily by the hand of another, is he
afraid of the guards? No, for he wishes for the thing which makes the
guards formidable. If then any man neither wishing to die nor to live by
all means, but only as it may be permitted, approaches the tyrant what
hinders him from