Christian fiction; Church history -- Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600 -- Fiction
There are, said Epictetus, in each man two characters—the character of
the Beast and the character of the Man. By Beast he meant wild or savage
beast, as distinct from tame beast, which he preferred to call “sheep.”
“Sheep” meant the cowardly, passive-greedy passions within us. “The
Beast” meant the savage, aggressive-greedy nature, not only stirring us
up to external war against our neighbours, but also waging war to the
death against our inward better nature, against the “Man.” The mark or
stamp of the Beast he connected with Nero. “Cast it away,” he said. The
opposite mark or stamp he connected with the recently deceased Emperor,
Trajan. If we acted like a beast, he warned us that we should become like
a beast, and then, according to his customary phrase, “_You will have
lost the Man_.” And was this, asked he, nothing to lose? Over and over
again he repeated it: “_You have thrown away the Man_.” It was in this
light—as a type of the Man—that he regarded Hercules, the first of the
Cynics, the Son of God, going on the errands of the Father to destroy the
Beast in its various shapes, typifying an armed Missionary, but armed
for spiritual not for fleshly warfare, destroying the Beast that would
fain dominate the world. But it was for Diogenes that he reserved his
chief admiration, placing him (I think) even above Socrates, or at all
events praising him more warmly—partly, perhaps, out of fellow-feeling,
because Diogenes, too, like himself, had known what it was to be a slave.
Never shall I forget the passage in this lecture in which he described
Alexander surprising the great Cynic asleep, and waking him up with a
line of Homer:—
“To sleep all night suits not a Councillor,”
—to which Diogenes replied at once in the following line, claiming for
himself the heavy burden (entrusted to him by Zeus) of caring like a king
for all the nations of the earth:—
“Who holds, in trust, the world’s vast orb of cares.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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