I noted with pleasure here the words, “He does not neglect the meanest of His creatures.” To the same effect elsewhere, speaking of Zeus, he said, “In very truth, the universal frame of things is badly managed unless Zeus takes care of all His own citizens, in order that they may be blessed like unto Himself.” A little before this, he said about Hercules, “He left his children behind him without a groan or regret—not as though he were leaving them orphans, for he knew that no man is an orphan,” because Zeus is “Father of men.” In all these passages describing the fatherhood of God and the sonship of man, Epictetus spoke of virtue as being, by itself, a sufficient reward, in respect of the ineffable peace that it brings through the consciousness of being united to God. But how long this union lasted, and whether its durability was proof against death—as Socrates taught—about this he had hitherto said nothing. The Cynic, he again and again insisted, was God’s son; but he did not insist that the son was as immortal as the Father. Sometimes indeed he described the man of temperance and self-control as “banqueting at the table of the Gods.” Still more, the man that had passed beyond temperance into contempt of earthly things—a rank to which Arrian and I did not aspire—such a Cynic as this he extolled as being not only fellow-guest with the Gods but also fellow-ruler. These expressions reminded me of what we used to learn by heart in Rome concerning the man described by Horace as “just and firm of purpose.” The poet likened him to Hercules transported aloft to the fiery citadel of heaven, and to the Emperor Augustus drinking nectar at the table of the Gods. But this was said about Augustus while he was still alive; and the poem did not seem to me to prove that Horace believed in the immortality of the soul. However, what Epictetus said about that will appear hereafter. For the present, I must explain why the teaching of Epictetus concerning the Gods, although it carried me away for a time, caused me bewilderment in the end, and made me feel the need of something beyond. CHAPTER III ARRIAN ON THE OATH OF THE CHRISTIANS