Passing over several of the lectures that left me in the condition I have endeavoured to describe, I will now come to the one in which Epictetus alluded to Christians. “Jews” he called them. But he defined them in such a way as to convince Arrian that he meant Christians. Even if he did not, the impression produced on me was the same as if he had actually mentioned them by name. The lecture began with the subject of “steadfastness.” “A practical subject, this,” I said to myself, “for one in training to be a second Artemidorus.” But the “steadfastness” was not of the sort demanded in camps and battlefields. The essence of good, said the lecturer, is right choice, and that of evil a wrong choice. External things are not in our power, internal things are: “This Law God has laid down, _If thou wilt have good, take it from thyself_.” Then followed one of the now familiar dialogues, of which I was beginning to be a little tired, between a tyrant threatening a philosopher, who points out that he cannot possibly be threatened. The tyrant stares and says, “I will put you in chains.” The wise man replies, “It is my hands and feet that you threaten.” “I will cut off your head,” shouts the tyrant. “It is my head that you threaten,” replies the philosopher. After a good deal more of this, a pupil is supposed to ask, “Does not the tyrant threaten _you_ then?” To this the lecturer replies, “Yes, if I fear these things. But if I have a feeling and conviction that these things are nothing to me, then I am not threatened.” Then he appealed to us, “Of whom do I stand in fear? What things must he be master of to make me afraid? Do you say, ‘The master of things that are in your power’? I reply, ‘There is no such master.’ As for things not in my power, what are they to me?” Epictetus had a sort of rule or canon for us beginners, by which we were to take the measure of the so-called evils of life: “Make a habit of saying at once to every harsh-looking apparition of this sort, ‘You are an apparition and not at all the thing you appear to be. Are you of the number of the things in my power, or are you not? If not, you are nothing to me.’” Applying this to a concrete instance, our Master now dramatized a dialogue between himself and Agamemnon, who is supposed to be passing a sleepless night in anxiety for the Greeks, lest the Trojans should destroy them on the morrow. “_Epict._ What! Tearing your hair! And you say your heart leaps in terror! And all for what? What is amiss with you? Money-matters? “_Ag._ No. “_Epict._ Health? “_Ag._ No. “_Epict._ No indeed! You have gold and silver to spare. What then is amiss with you? That part of you has been neglected and utterly corrupted, wherewith we desire etc. etc.”