The Teaching of Epictetus: Being the 'Encheiridion of Epictetus,' with Selections from the 'Dissertations' and 'Fragments'Epictetus
Philosophy
The Teaching of Epictetus: Being the 'Encheiridion of Epictetus,' with Selections from the 'Dissertations' and 'Fragments'
Epictetus
Philosophy, Ancient
casting out and purging the one, and bringing in the other in its place.
And how many friends, think you, had he in Thebes? how many in Argos?
how many in Athens? and how many did he gain in his journeyings? And he
took a wife, too, when it seemed to him due time, and begat children,
and left them behind him, not with lamentations or regrets, nor leaving
them as orphans; for he knew that no man is an orphan, but that there is
an Eternal Father who careth continually for all. For not of report
alone had he heard that Zeus is the Father of men, whom also he thought
to be his own father, and called Him so, and all that he did, he did
looking unto Him. And thus it was that he was able to live happily in
every place.
5. For never can happiness and the longing for what is not exist
together. For Happiness must have all its will. It is like unto one that
hath eaten and is filled; thirst will not sort with it, nor hunger. _But
Ulysses longed for his wife, and lamented as he sat on the rock._[1] And
do you, then, follow Homer and his stories in everything? Or if he did
in truth lament, what else was he than an unfortunate man? And what good
man is unfortunate? Verily, the Whole is ill-governed if Zeus taketh no
care of his own citizens, that they like himself may be happy; but these
things it is not lawful nor pious even to think of. But Ulysses, if
indeed he lamented and complained, was not a good man. For what good man
is there that knoweth not who he is? and who knoweth this who forgets
that things which come into existence also perish, and that no two human
beings dwell together forever? To aim, then, at things which are
impossible is a contemptible and foolish thing; it is the part of a
stranger and alien in God’s world who fights against God in the one way
he can—by his own opinions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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