nd executed, put the dagger to his breast, it was
Epaphroditus who helped the tyrant to drive it home into his heart, for
which he was subsequently banished, and finally executed by the
Emperor Domitian.

Epictetus was accustomed to tell one or two anecdotes which, although
given without comment, show the narrowness and vulgarity of the man.
Among his slaves was a certain worthless cobbler named Felicio; as the
cobbler was quite useless, Epaphroditus sold him, and by some chance he
was bought by some one of Caesar's household, and made Caesar's cobbler.
Instantly Epaphroditus began to pay him the profoundest respect, and to
address him in the most endearing terms, so that if any one asked what
Epaphroditus was doing, the answer, as likely as not, would be, "He is
holding an important consultation with Felicio."

On one occasion, some one came to him bewailing, and weeping, and
embracing his knees in a paroxysm of grief, because of all his fortune
little more than 50,000_l_. was left! "What did Epaphroditus do?" asks
Epictetus; "did he laugh at the man as we did? Not at all; on the
contrary, he exclaimed, in a tone of commiseration and surprise, 'Poor
fellow! how could you possibly keep silence and endure such a
misfortune?'"

How brutally he could behave, and how little respect he inspired, we may
see in the following anecdote. When Plautius Lateranus, the brave
nobleman whose execution during Piso's conspiracy we have already
related, had received on his neck an ineffectual blow of the tribune's
sword, Epaphroditus, even at that dread moment, could not abstain from
pressing him with questions. The only reply which he received from the
dying man was the contemptuous remark, "Should I wish to say anything, I
will say it (not to a slave like you, but) to _your master_."

Under a man of this calibre it is hardly likely that a lame Phrygian boy
would experience much kindness. An anecdote, indeed, has been handed
down to us by several writers, which would show that he was treated with
atrocious cruelty. Epaphroditus, it is said, once gratified his cruelty
by twisting his slave's leg in some instrument of torture. "If you go
on, you will break it," said Epictetus. The wretch did go on, and did
break it. "I told you that you would break it," said Epictetus quietly,
not giving vent to his anguish by a single word or a single groan.
Stories of heroism no less triumphant have been authenticated both in
ancient and modern time