A few moments ago, I had been sorry that Glaucus went out. But I ceased to regret it when I heard what followed. It was in a contrast between Socrates and the heroes of tragedy, or rather the victims of calamity. We must learn, he said, to exterminate from life the tragic phrases, “Alas!” “Woe is me!” “Me miserable!” We must learn to say with Socrates, on the point of drinking the hemlock, “My dear Crito, if this way is God’s will, this way let it be!” and not, “Miserable me! Aged as I am, to what wretchedness have I brought my grey hairs!” Then he asked, “Who says this? Do you suppose it is someone in a mean or ignoble station? Is it not Priam? Is it not Œdipus? Is it not the whole class of kings? What else is tragedy except the passionate words and acts and sufferings of human beings given up to a stupid and adoring wonder at external things—sufferings set forth in metre!” This seemed to me gratuitously cruel. If ever human being deserved pity, was it not the poor babe Œdipus, predestined even before birth to evil, cast out to die on Mount Cithaeron, but rescued by the cruel kindness of a stranger—to kill his own father, to marry his own mother, to beget children that were his brothers and sisters, and to die, an exile, in self-inflicted blindness, bequeathing his evil fate to guilty sons and a guiltless daughter! But Epictetus would not let Œdipus alone: “It is among the rich, the kings, and the despots, that tragedies find place. No poor man fills a tragic part except as one of the chorus. But the kings begin with prosperity, commanding their subjects (like Œdipus) to fix garlands on their houses in joy and thankfulness to the Gods. Then, about the third or fourth act, comes ‘Alas, Cithaeron, why didst thou receive and shelter me?’ Poor, servile wretch, where are your crowns now? Where is your royal diadem? Cannot your guards assist you?” All this was in stage-play, the agony of the king and the scoffing of the philosopher so life-like as to be quite painful—at least to me. Then Epictetus turned to us in his own person: “Well, then, in the act of approaching one of these great people, remember this, that you are going to a tragedian. By ‘_tragedian_’ I do not mean an _actor_, but a _tragic person_, Œdipus himself. But perhaps you say to me ‘Yes, but such and such a lord or ruler may be called blessed. For he walks with a multitude’”—of slaves, he meant—“‘around him.’ See, then! I too go and place myself in company with that multitude. Do not I also ‘walk with a multitude’? But to sum up. Remember that the door is always open. Do not be more cowardly than the children. When they cease to take pleasure in their game, they cry at once ‘I will not play any more.’ So you, too, as soon as things appear to you to point to that conclusion, say, ‘I will not play any more.’ And be off. Or, if you stay, don’t keep complaining.”