“Now this is just what Epictetus would have liked to do. Only he could not often get people to take him in the same serious way, because he had not the same serious business in hand. I verily believe he was not altogether displeased when the Prefect of the City banished him with other philosophers of note under Domitian. I know certain philosophers who actually made money by being thus banished. It was an advertisement for their lectures. Don’t imagine that _your_ philosopher made, or wished to make, money. No. But he made influence—which he valued above money. “However, the Emperors and Prefects after Domitian were not such fools. They knew the difference between a real revolution and a revolution on paper. A mere theoretical exaltation of the mind above the body, a mere scholastic laudation of kingship over the minds of men as superior to kingship over their bodies—these things kings tolerate; for they mean nothing but words. But a revolution in the name of a _person_—a person, too, supposed by fanatics to be living and present in all their secret meetings, ‘wherever two or three are gathered together,’ for that is their phrase—this may mean a great deal. A person, regarded in this way, may take hold of men’s spirits. Missionaries pretending—or, still worse, believing—that they are speaking in the name of such a person, may lead crowds of silly folk into all sorts of sedition. They may refuse, for example, to adore the Emperor’s image and to offer sacrifice to the Gods of the State; or they might even attempt to subvert the foundations of society by withholding taxes, or by encouraging or inculcating some wholesale manumission of slaves. This sort of thing means war, and Paul, fifty years ago, was actually waging this war. Epictetus longs to be waging it now. As he cannot, he takes pleasure in urging his pupils to it, painting an imaginary battle array in which he sees imaginary soldiers waging, or destined to wage, imaginary conflicts with imaginary enemies.