It is circumstances (difficulties) which show what men are. Therefore, when a difficulty falls upon you, remember that God, like a trainer of wrestlers, has matched you with a rough young man. For what purpose? you may say. Why, that you may become an Olympic conqueror; _but it is not accomplished without sweat_.... Hercules, when he was being exercised by Eurytheus, never deemed himself wretched; but fulfilled courageously all that was laid upon him. But he who shall cry out and bear it hard when he is being exercised by Zeus, is he worthy to bear the scepter of Diogenes? The philosopher's school, ye men, is a surgery; you ought not to go out of it with pleasure but with pain, for you are not in sound health when you enter: one has dislocated his shoulder, another has an abscess ... another a headache. And shall I sit and utter to you little thoughts and exclamations, that you may praise me and go away, one with his shoulder in the same condition as when he entered, another with his head still aching, and a third with his fistula or his abscess just as they were? Is it for this that young men quit home and leave their parents and friends, their kinsmen and property, that they may say to you, Wonderful! when you are uttering your exclamations? Did Socrates do this, or Zeno, or Cleanthes? Diogenes well said to one who asked from him letters of recommendation, "That you are a man he will know as soon as he sees you; and he will know whether you are good or bad if he has, through experience, the skill to distinguish the good and the bad; but if he has not, he would not know though I were to write him ten thousand times." For it is just the same as if a drachma asked to be recommended to a person. If he is skilful in testing silver, he will know you (the drachma) for what you are. We ought then in life to be able to have some such skill as in the case of silver coin, that we may be able to say, like the judge of silver, Bring me any drachma and I will test it. When Florus was deliberating whether he should go down to Nero's spectacles, and also perform in them, he asked Agrippinus for advice, and Agrippinus said, Go down. But why do you not go down? said Florus; and Agrippinus replied, I do not even deliberate about the matter; _for he who has brought himself to calculate the value of external things, is very near to those who have forgotten their own character_. But if I do not take part, I shall have my head struck off. Go then, said Agrippinus, and take part; but I will not. Why? Because you consider yourself to be only one common thread in the tunic; it is then fitting for you to take thought how you shall be like the rest of men. But I wish to be purple, that small part which is bright, _and makes all the rest appear graceful and beautiful_.