“You never see a Christian begging. What is more, they set their faces against the exposing of children. I have often thought that our law is very defective in this respect. We will not let a father strangle his infant son, but we let him kill it by cold, starvation, or wild beasts. Every such death is the loss of a possible soldier to the state. It is a great mistake politically, and I am not sure whether it is right morally. When I first came to Nicopolis I used to hear it said that our Epictetus—one of the kindest of men I verily believe—once adopted a baby that was on the point of being exposed by one of his friends, got a nurse for it, and put himself to a lot of trouble. I sometimes wonder why he did not first give his friend the money to find a nurse and food for the baby, and then give him a good sharp reprimand for his inhumanity. For I call it inhuman. But I never heard Epictetus say a word against this practice. The Jews as well as the Christians condemn it. Perhaps the latter, in this point, merely followed the former; but in most points the Christians seem to me superior to the Jews. “I am proud to call myself a philosopher, and perhaps I should be prouder than Epictetus would like if I could call myself a Roman citizen; but I am free to confess that there are points in which philosophers and Romans could learn something from these despised followers of Christus. _Fas est et a Christiano doceri._ I have been more impressed than I can easily explain to you on paper by the behaviour of this strangely superstitious sect. There is a strenuous fervour in their goodness—I mean in the Christians, I am not now speaking of the Jews—which I don’t find in my own attempts at goodness. I am, at best, only a second-class Cynic, devoid of fervour.