The pagan missionary no less than the Christian apostle to the Gentiles regarded life as a battle to be fought and a race to be run. Epictetus often compared human life to a warfare; he said that men were assigned their several places and duties in this world, just as in an army one man is obliged to stand watch, another to spy, and a third to fight, each doing his part in the place in which the great general, God, had set him,—a figure which Socrates had used five centuries earlier in his defence before his judges. In accord with this view of life as a battle or an athletic contest, the philosophers laid much weight on training. Seneca and Epictetus both exhorted their pupils to exercise themselves in the means whereby they could meet misfortune or be ready to perform any duty which the changes of life might bring them. The latter had a discourse “On Exercise,” which was apparently a favorite theme for all Stoic preachers.[278] The purpose of this exercise was to train the individual in right abstentions and the proper use of his desires, so that he would be always obedient to reason and do nothing out of season or place—in short to make him an adept in living so that he could manage his usual life with adroit uprightness and meet the sudden changes of fortune undismayed. In another discourse Epictetus pointed out that the misfortunes of life were tests sent by God to prove the individual’s fidelity in training; “God says to you, ‘Give me proof if you have duly practised athletics, if you have eaten what you should, if you have exercised, if you have obeyed the trainer.’ And then will you show yourself weak when the time for action comes? Now is the time for a fever. Bear it well. Now the time for thirst. Endure thy thirst well.”[279]