EPICTETUS’ DISCOURSES, PART II. . .

In my last post I began quoting from Epictetus’ Discourses, Book I, Part I: Concerning what is in our power and what is not.  I will continue today.  Epictetus writes:

And yet, where there is only the one thing we can car for and devote ourselves to [i.e. our power to make good use of impressions], we choose instead to care about and attach ourselves to a score of others: to our bodies, to our property, to our family, friends. . .And being attached to many things, we are weighed down and dragged along with them. . . What should we do then?  Make the best use of what is in our power, and treat the rest in accordance with its nature.  And what is its nature?  However God decides.

‘Must I be beheaded now, and alone?’  Well, do you want everyone to be beheaded just because misery loves company?  Why not hold out your neck the way Lateranus did at Rome, when condemned by Nero to be beheaded?  He held out his neck willingly to take the blow — but the blow was deficient, so he recoiled a bit, but then had enough self-command to offer his neck a second time. . .

What should we have ready at hand in a situation like this?  The knowledge of what is mine and what is not mine, what I can and cannot do.  I must die.  But must I die bawling?  I must be put in chains — but moaning and groaning too?  I must be exiled; but is there anything to keep me from going with a smile, calm and self-composed?  [NOTE: Epictetus was imprisoned and then exiled with many other philosophers and some were put to death]. . . It’s only my leg you will chain, not even God can conquer my will.  ‘I will throw you in prison.’  ‘Correction — it is my body you will throw there’. . .

That’s the kind of attitude you need to cultivate if you would be a philosopher, the sort of sentiments you should write down every day and put in practice. . . .

Agrippinus used to say, “I don’t add to my troubles.”  To illustrate, someone once said to him, “You are being tried in the Senate — good luck.”  But it was eleven in the morning, and at that hour he was in the habit of taking his bath and exercise.  “Let us be off to exercise.”  When he was done, word came that the had been condemned.  “To exile,” he asked, “or death?”  “Exile.”  “And my estate, what about that?”  ” It has not been confiscated.”  “Well then, let’s go to my villa in Aricia and have lunch there.”  This shows what is possible when we practice what is necessary, and make our desire and aversion safe against any setback or adversity.  ‘I have to die.  If it is now, well then I die now; if later, then now I will take my lunch, since the hour for lunch has arrived — and dying I will tend to later.’