tive, and yet have remarked but
one difference among you great personages at Rome.

_Seneca._ What difference fell under your observation?

_Epictetus._ Crates and Zeno and Cleanthes taught us that our desires
were to be subdued by philosophy alone. In this city, their acute and
inventive scholars take us aside, and show us that there is not only
one way, but two.

_Seneca._ Two ways?

_Epictetus._ They whisper in our ear, 'These two ways are philosophy
and enjoyment: the wiser man will take the readier, or, not finding
it, the alternative.' Thou reddenest.

_Seneca._ Monstrous degeneracy.

_Epictetus._ What magnificent rings! I did not notice them until thou
liftedst up thy hands to heaven, in detestation of such effeminacy and
impudence.

_Seneca._ The rings are not amiss; my rank rivets them upon my
fingers: I am forced to wear them. Our emperor gave me one,
Epaphroditus another, Tigellinus the third. I cannot lay them aside a
single day, for fear of offending the gods, and those whom they love
the most worthily.

_Epictetus._ Although they make thee stretch out thy fingers, like the
arms and legs of one of us slaves upon a cross.

_Seneca._ Oh, horrible! Find some other resemblance.

_Epictetus._ The extremities of a fig-leaf.

_Seneca._ Ignoble!

_Epictetus._ The claws of a toad, trodden on or stoned.

_Seneca._ You have great need, Epictetus, of an instructor in
eloquence and rhetoric: you want topics, and tropes, and figures.

_Epictetus._ I have no room for them. They make such a buzz in the
house, a man's own wife cannot understand what he says to her.

_Seneca._ Let us reason a little upon style. I would set you right,
and remove from before you the prejudices of a somewhat rustic
education. We may adorn the simplicity of the wisest.

_Epictetus._ Thou canst not adorn simplicity. What is naked or
defective is susceptible of decoration: what is decorated is
simplicity no longer. Thou mayest give another thing in exchange for
it; but if thou wert master of it, thou wouldst preserve it inviolate.
It is no wonder that we mortals, little able as we are to see truth,
should be less able to express it.

_Seneca._ You have formed at present no idea of style.

_Epictetus._ I never think about it. First, I consider whether what I
am about to say is true; then, whether I can say it with brevity, in
such a manner as that others shall see it as clearly as I do in the
light of truth; for, if they sur