“You may say, like an orthodox scholar of Epictetus, ‘Let them keep their fervour and leave me calmness.’ But these men have both. They can be seasonably fervid and seasonably calm. I have heard many true stories of their behaviour in the last persecution. Go into one of their synagogues and you may hear their priest—or rather prophet, for priests they have none—thundering and lightening as though he held the thunderbolts of Zeus. Order the fellow off for scourging or execution, and he straightway becomes serenity itself. Not Epictetus could be more serene. Indeed, where an Epictetian would ‘make himself a stone’ under stripes and say, ‘They are nothing to me,’ a Christian would rejoice to bear them ‘for the sake of Christus.’ And even Epictetus, I think, could not reach the warmth, the glow, of their affection for each other. I am devoutly thankful that I did not occupy my present office under Pliny. It has never been my fate to scourge, rack, torture, or kill, one of these honest, simple, excellent creatures, whose only fault is what Epictetus would call their ‘_dogma_’ or conviction—surely such a ‘dogma’ as an emperor might almost think it well to encourage among the uneducated classes, in view of its excellent results. Farewell, and be ever my friend.” The third hour had almost arrived and I had to hasten to the lecture-room taking with me the note addressed to Epictetus. All the way, I could think of nothing but the contrast between what Arrian had said about the Christians, and what Mark and Matthew had said about Christ’s last words—the servants tranquil, steadfast, rejoicing in persecution; their Master crying “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” It perplexed me beyond measure. In this bewilderment, I took my accustomed place beside Glaucus, who greeted me with even more than his usual warmth. He seemed strangely altered. It was no new thing for him to look worn and haggard. But to-day there was a strange wildness in his eyes. Absorbed though I was in my own thoughts, I could not help noticing this as I sat down, just before Epictetus began. The lecture was of a discursive kind but might be roughly divided into two parts, one adapted for the first class of Cynics, those who aspired to teach; the other for the second class, those who were content to practise. The first class Epictetus cautioned against expecting too much. No man, he said, not even the best of Cynic teachers, could control the will of another. Socrates himself could not persuade his own son. It was rather with the view of satisfying his own nature, than of moving other men’s nature, that Socrates taught. Apollo himself, he said, uttered oracles in the same way. I believe he also repeated—what I have recorded before—that Socrates “did not persuade one in a thousand” of those whom he tried to persuade.