“But,” said I, “does it not seem to you that our military oath ought to be a positive one, namely, that we Cynics will goanywhere and do anything that the General may command—and not a negative one, that we will abstain from grumbling against His orders?” Arrian replied, “As to that, I think our Master follows Socrates, who expressly says that he had indeed a daemon, or at all events a daemonic voice; but that it told him only what to avoid, not what to do.” “Surely,” replied I, “what Socrates said on his trial was, ‘How could I be fairly described as introducing new daemons when saying thata voice of God manifestly points out to me what I ought to do?’” “I do not remember that,” said my friend, “but we are near my rooms. Come in and let us look into Plato’s Apologia.”
So we went in, and Arrian took out of his book-case Plato’s account of the Speech of Socrates before the jury that condemned him to death. “There, Silanus,” said he, “you see I was right.” And he pointed to these words, “There comes to me, as you have often heard me say, a divine and daemonic something, which indeed my prosecutor Meletus mentioned and burlesqued in his written indictment. This thing, in its commencement, dates back (I believe) from my boyhood, a kind of Voice that comes to me from time to time, and, whenever it comes, it always”—“Mark this,” said Arrian—“turns me back from doing that (whatever it may be) which I am purposing to do, but never moves me forward.”
I seemed fairly and fully confuted. But suddenly it occurred to me to ask my friend to let me see Xenophon’s version of the same speech. He brought it out. I was not long before I disinterred the very words that I have quoted above, “a Voice of God that manifestly points out to me what I ought to do.” And the context, too, indicated that the Voice—which he callsdaemonic, or adaemonion—gave positive directions, recognised as such by his friends.
This very important difference between Plato and Xenophon in regard to the daemon of Socrates, as described by Socrates himself, interested Arrian not a little. “Come back,” he said, “in the evening, when I shall have finished reducing my notes to writing, and let us put the two versions side by side and see how many passages we can find agreeing.” So I came back after sunset, and we sat down and went carefully through them.And, as far as I remember, we could not find these two great biographers of this great man agreeing in so much as a dozen consecutive words in their several records of his Apologia, his only public speech. Presently—Arrian having Xenophon in his hand and I Plato—I read out the well-known words of Socrates about Anytus and Meletus, his accusers, and about their power to kill him but not to hurt him. “What,” said I, “is Xenophon’s version of this?” “He omits it altogether,” replied Arrian; “but I see, reading on, that he puts into the mouth of Socrates an entirely different saying about Anytus, after the condemnation. Let me see the Plato.” Taking it from my hand, he observed, “Our Master, Epictetus, who is continually quoting these words of Plato’s, never quotes them exactly. ‘Anytus and Meletus may kill me but they cannot hurt me’—that is always his condensed version. But you see it is not Plato’s, Plato’s is much longer.”
So the conversation strayed away in a literary direction. We talked a great deal—without much knowledge, at least on my part—about oral tradition. I remarked on the possibilities in it of astonishing divergences and distortions of doctrine—“unless,” said I, as I rose up to go, “it happens, by good fortune, to be taken down at the time by an honest fellow like you, who loves his teacher, but loves the truth more, so that he just sets down what he hears, as he hears it.” “I do my best,” said Arrian; “but if it were not nearly midnight, I could shew you that even my best is not always good enough. I suspect that such sayings of our Master as become most current will be very variously reported a hundred years hence.”
“Good-night,” said I, and was opening the door to depart, when it flashed upon me that all this time, although we had been discussing Socrates, and assuming a resemblance between him and our Master, we had said nothing about that great doctrine in the profession of which Socrates breathed his last—prescribing a sacrifice to Æsculapius as though death were the beginning of a higher life—I mean the immortality of the soul. “I will not stay now,” said I, “but we have not said a word about Epictetus’s doctrine concerning the immortality of the soul; could you lend me some of your notes about it?” “Heseldom speaks of it,” replied my friend; “when he does, it is not always easy to distinguish between metaphor and not-metaphor. My notes, so far, do not quite satisfy me that I have done him justice. He is likely to touch on it in the next lecture or soon after. I should prefer you to hear for yourself what he says.”
“One more question,” said I. “Did our Master ever, in your hearing, refer to that last strange saying of Socrates, ‘We owe a cock to Æsculapius’? Sometimes it seems to me the finest epigram in all Greek literature.” “Never,” replied Arrian. “He has never mentioned it either in my hearing, or in the hearing of those whom I have asked about it. And I have asked many.”
Departing home I found myself almost at once forgetting our long literary discussion about oral tradition, in the larger and deeper question touched on in the last few minutes. Why should not Arrian have been able to “do justice” to Epictetus in this particular subject? Was it that our Teacher did not quite “do justice” to himself? Then I began to ask what Epictetus had meant precisely by such expressions as that men may become “fellow-banqueters” and even “fellow-rulers” with “the Gods.” “If God Himself is immortal, how,” said I, “can ‘God’s own son’ fail to be immortal also?”
All through that night, even till near dawn, I was harassed with wild and wearying dreams. I travelled, wandering through wilderness after wilderness in quest of Socrates and nowhere finding him. Wherever I went I seemed to hear a strange monotonous cry that followed close behind me. Presently I heard a flapping of wings, and I knew that the sound was the crowing of the cock that was to be offered for Socrates to Æsculapius. Then it became a mocking, inarticulate, human voice striving to utter articulate speech. At last I heard distinctly, “If Zeus could have, he would have. If he could have, he would have. But he could not.”
The cock was still crowing when I started out of my dream. It was not yet dawn but sleep was impossible. When Arrian called to accompany me to lecture, he found me in a fever and sent in a physician, by whose advice I stayed indoors for two or three days. During this enforced inaction, I resolved to write to my old friend Scaurus. Marcus Æmilius Scaurus—for that was his name in full—had been a friend of my father’s, years before I was born; and his advice had been largely the cause of my coming to Nicopolis. Scaurus had seen service; but for many years past he had devoted himself wholly to literature, not as a rhetorician, nor as a lover of the poets, but as “a practical historian,” so he called it. By this he meant to distinguish himself from what he called “ornamental historians.” “History,” he used to say, “contains truth in a well; and I like trying to draw it out.”
For a man of nearly seventy, Scaurus was remarkably vigorous in mind and thought, with large stores of observation and learning, of a sort not common among Romans of good birth. His favourite motto was, “Quick to perceive, slow to believe.” I used to think he erred on the side of believing too little, and his friends used to call him Miso-mythus or “Myth-hater.” But over and over again, when I had ventured to discuss with him a matter of documentary evidence, I had found that his incredulity was justified; so that I had come to admit that there was some force in his protest, that he ought to be called, not “Myth-hater,” but “Truth-lover.”
In the year after my fathers death, when I was wasting my time in Rome, and in danger of doing worse, Scaurus took me to task as befitted my father’s dearest friend—a cousin also of my mother, who had died while I was still an infant. He had long desired me to enter the army, and I should have done so but for illness. Now that my health was almost restored, he returned to his previous advice, but suggested that, for the present, I might spend a month or two with advantage in attending the lectures of Epictetus, of whom he knew something while he was in Rome, and about whom he had heard a good deal since. When I demurred, and told him that I had heard a good many philosophers and did not care for them, he replied, “Epictetus you will not find a common philosopher.” He pressed me and I yielded.
Since my coming to Nicopolis, I had written once to tell him of my arrival, and to thank him for advising me to come to so admirable a teacher. But I had been too much absorbed in the teaching to enter into detail. Now, having leisure, and knowing his great interest in such subjects, I wrote to him even more fully than I have done for my readers above, sending him all my lecture notes; and I asked him what he judged to be the secret of Epictetus, which made him so different from other philosophers. Nor did I omit to tell him of my talk with Arrian about the Christians and theirsacramentum.
Many days elapsed, and I had been attending lectures again for a long time, before his letter in reply reached Nicopolis; but I will set it down here, as also a second letter from him on the same subject. In the first, Scaurus expressed his satisfaction at my meeting with Arrian (whom he knew and described as an extremely sensible and promising young man, likely to get on). He added a hope that I would take precisely Arrian’s view of the advantage to be derived from philosophy. But a large part of his letter—much more than I could have wished—was occupied with our “wonderful discovery” (as he called it) that Plato and Xenophon disagreed in their versions of the Apologia of Socrates. On this he rallied us as mere babes in criticism, but, said he, not much more babyish than many professed critics, who cannot be made to understand that—outsidepoetry, and traditions learned by rote, and a few “aculeate sayings” (so he called them) of philosophers and great men—no two historians ever agree independently—he laid stress on “independently”—for twenty consecutive words, in recording a speech or dialogue. “I will not lay you a wager,” said he, “for it would be cheating you. But I will make you an offer. If you and Arrian, between you, can find twenty identical consecutive words of Socrates in the whole of Xenophon’s Memorabilia and Plato’s Dialogues, I will give you five hundred sesterces apiece[1]. Your failure (for fail you will) ought to strike you as all the more remarkable because both Plato and Xenophon tell us that Socrates used to describe himself as ‘always saying the same things about the same subjects.’ That one similar saying they have preserved. For the rest, these two great biographers, writing page upon page of Socratic talk, cannot agree exactly about ‘the same things’ for a score of consecutive words!”
He added more, not of great interest to me, about the credulity of those who persuaded themselves that Xenophon’s version must be spurious just because it differed from Plato’s, whereas, said he, this very difference went to shew that it was genuine, and that Xenophon was tacitly correcting Plato. But concerning the secret of Epictetus he said very little—and that, merely in reference to thesacramentumof the Christians which I mentioned in my first letter. On this he remarked that Pliny, with whom he had been well acquainted, had never mentioned the matter to him. “But that,” he said, “is not surprising. His measures to suppress the Christian superstition did not prove so successful as he had hoped. Moreover he disliked the whole business—having to deal with mendacious informers on one side, and fanatical fools or hysterical women on the other. And I, who knew a good deal more about the Christians than Pliny did, disliked the subject still more. My conviction is, however, that your excellent Epictetus—rationalist though he is now, and even less prone to belief than Socrates—has not been always unscathed by that same Christian infection (for that is the right name for it).
“Partly, he sympathizes with the Christian hatred or contempt for ‘the powers of this world’ (to use their phrase) and partly with their allegiance to one God, whom he and they regard as casting down kings and setting up philosophers. But there is this gulf between them. The Christians think of their champion, Christus, as having devoted himself to death for their sake, and then as having been miraculously raised from the dead, and as, even now, present among them whenever they choose to meet together and ‘sing hymns to him as to a God.’ Epictetus absolutely disbelieves this. Hence, he is at a great disadvantage—I mean, of course, as a preacher, not as a philosopher. The Christians have their God, standing in the midst of their daily assemblies, before whom they can ‘corybantize’—to repeat your expression—to their hearts’ content. Your teacher has nothing—nay, worse than nothing, for he has a blank and feels it to be a blank.
“What does he do then? He fills the blank with a Hercules or a Diogenes or a Socrates, and he corybantizes before that. But it is a make-believe, though an honest one. I have said more than I intended. You know how I ramble on paper. And the habit is growing on me. Let no casual word of mine make you doubt that Epictetus is thoroughly honest. But honest men may be deceived. Be ‘quick in perceiving, slow in believing.’ Keep to Arrian’s view of a useful and practical life in the world, the world as it is, not as it might be in Plato’s Republic—which, by the way, would be a very dull place. Farewell.”
This letter did not satisfy me at all. “Honest men,” I repeated, “may be deceived.” True, and Scaurus, though honest as the day, is no exception. To think that Epictetus,ourEpictetus—for so Arrian and I used to call him—had been even for a time under the spell of such a superstition as this! I had always assumed—and my conversation with Arrian about what seemed exceptional experiences in Bithynia had done little to shake my assumption—that the Christians were a vile Jewish sect, morose, debased, given up to monstrous secret vices, hostile to the Empire, and hateful to Gods and men. What was the ground for connecting Epictetus withthem? Contempt for rulers? That was no new thing in philosophers. Many of them had despised kings, or affected to despise them, without any intention of rebelling against them. What though Epictetus suggested, in a hyperbolical or metaphorical way, a religioussacramentumfor philosophers? This was quite different from that of the Christians as mentioned by Arrian. I could not help feeling that, for once, my old friend had “perceived” little and “believed” much.
Perhaps my reply shewed traces of this feeling. At all events, Scaurus wrote back, asking whether I had observed in him “a habit of basing conclusions on slight grounds.” Then he continued “I told you that I knew a good deal about the Christians. I also know a great deal more about Epictetus than you suppose. When I was a young man, I attended the lectures of that most admirable of philosophers, Musonius Rufus. About the time when I left, Epictetus, then a slave, was brought to the classes by his master, Epaphroditus; and Rufus, whom I shall always regard with respect and affection, spoke to me about his new pupil in the highest terms. Afterwards he often told me how he tried to arm the poor boy with philosophy against what he would have to endure from such a master. Many a time have I thought that the young philosopher must have needed all his Stoic armour, going home from the lecture-room of Rufus to the palace of Nero’s freedman.
“But I also remember seeing him long before that, when he came one morning as a mere child not twelve years old, along with Epaphroditus, to Nero’s Palace. I was then about fourteen or fifteen. After we had left the Palace—my father and I—we came upon him again on that same evening, staring at some Christians, smeared with pitch and burning away like so many flaring torches, to light the Imperial Gardens—one of Nero’s insane or bestial freaks! I have never been able to forget the sight, and I have often thought that he could never forget it. Somewhere about that time, one of the Christian ringleaders, Paulus by name, was put to death. As happens in such cases, his people began to collect every scrap of his writings that could be found. A little volume of them cameinto my hands some twenty years ago. But long before that date, all through the period when Epictetus was in Rufus’s classes, the Christian slaves in Rome had in their hands the letters of this Paulus or Paul. One of them, the longest, written to the Christians in Rome (a few years before Paul was brought to the City as a prisoner) goes back as far as sixty years ago. Some are still earlier. I saw the volume more than once in Cæsar’s Palace in the days of Vespasian. This Paul was one of the most practical of men, and his letters are steeped in practical experience. Epictetus, besides being a great devourer of literature in general, devoured in particular everything that bore on practical life. The odds are great that he would have come across the book somewhere among his slave or freedman friends.
“But I do not trust to such mere antecedent probabilities. You must know that, ever since Epictetus set up as a philosopher, I have followed his career with interest. Recluse though I am, I have many friends and correspondents. These, from time to time, have furnished me with notes of his lectures. Well, when I came to read Paul’s letters, I was prepared to find in them certain general similarities to Stoic doctrine; for Paul was a man of Tarsus and might have picked up these things at the University there. But I found a great deal more. I found particularities, just of the sort that you find in your lectures. Paul’s actual experiences had been exactly those of a vagrant Æsculapius or Hercules. Your friend idealizes the wanderings of Hercules; Paul enacted them. Paul journeyed from city to city, from continent to continent, everywhere turning the world upside down—Jerusalem, Damascus, Antioch, Ephesus, Colossæ, Philippi, Thessalonica, Corinth, Jerusalem again—last of all, Rome. Everywhere the slaves, the poor, the women, went after him. Everywhere he came into collision with the rulers of the earth. If he did not proclaim a war between them and his God, he at all events implied war.
“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 whenthe 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 thatyourphilosopher 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 aperson—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.
“Hence that picturesque contrast (in the lecture you transcribed for me) between the unmarried and the married Cynic—which, besides the similarity of thought, contains some curious similarities to the actual words of Paul. It ran thus, ‘The condition of the times being such as it is, opposing forces, as it were, being drawn up in line of battle’—that was his expression. Well, what followed from this non-existent, hypothetical, imminent conflict? The Philosopher, it seems, mustbe a soldier, ‘undistracted, wholly devoted to the ministry of God, able to go about and visit men, not bound fast to private personal duties, notentangledin conditions of life that he cannot honourably transgress.’ And then he describes at great length a married Cynic dragged down from his royal throne by the claims and encumbrances of a nursery. Now this same ‘undistractedness’ (using the very word) of unmarried life Paul himself has mentioned in a letter to the Corinthians, where he says that ‘owing to the pressing necessity’ of the times, it was good for a man to be unmarried, and that he wished them to be ‘free from anxiety.’ He concludes ‘But I speak this for your own profit, not that I may cast a noose round you but that you may with all seemliness attend on the Lordundistractedly.’ Again, he writes to one of his assistants or subalterns, ‘Endure hardship with me as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one engaged in a campaign isentangled’—your friend’s word again—‘in the affairs of civil life.’
“I lay little stress on the similarity of word, but a great deal on the similarity of thought. There is no such conflict as Epictetus describes. There is no such ‘line of battle’—not at least for us, Romans, or for you, Cynics. Butthere is for the Christians—arrayed as they are against the authorities of the Empire. And that reminds me of your Epictetian antithesis between ‘the Beast’ and ‘the Man.’ It is a little like a Christian tradition about ‘the Beast.’ By ‘the Beast’ they mean Nero. They have never forgotten his treatment of them after the fire. For a long time after his death they had a notion—I believe some of them have it still—that the Beast may rise from the dead and persecute them again. They also expect—I cannot do more than allude to their fantastic dreams—a sort of ‘Son of Man’ to appear on the clouds taking vengeance on the armies of the Beast. So, you see, they, too, recognise an opposition between the Man and the Beast. Only, with the Christians it is of a date much earlier than Epictetus. It goes back to a Jewish tradition, which represents a sort of opposition between the empires of Beasts and the empire of the Son of Man, in a prophet named Daniel, some centuries ago.
“Epictetus, of course, does not believe in all this. But stillhe persuades himself that there is such a ‘line of battle’ in the air, and that he and his followers can take part in this aerial conflict by ‘going about the world’ as spiritually armed warriors, making themselves substantially miserable—or what the world would call such—while championing the cause of unsubstantial good against evil. All that you wrote to me about the missionary life and its hardships—its destitution, homelessness, nakedness, yes, even the extraordinary phrase you added from Arrian’s notes about the cudgelled Cynic, how he ‘must be cudgelled like a donkey, and, in the act of being cudgelled, must love his cudgellers as being the father of all and brother of all’—all this I could match, in a compressed form, from a passage in my little Pauline volume. Here it is: ‘For I think that God has made a show of us Missionaries’—Missionaries, or Apostles, that is their name for their wandering Æsculapii—‘like condemned criminals in the arena. We have been made a theatre-show to the universe, to angels and men …:—up to this very moment, hungering, thirsting, naked, buffeted, driven from place to place, toiling and labouring with our own hands. Reviled, we bless; persecuted, we endure. Men imprecate evil on us, we exhort them to their good. We have been made as the refuse of the universe, the offscouring of all, up to this very moment.’
“Again, elsewhere, Paul brings in that same Epictetian contrast between the external misery and the internal joy of the Missionary: ‘Never needlessly offending anyone in anything, lest the Service’—which your philosopher calls ‘the service of God’—‘be reproached, but in everything commending ourselves as the Servants of God, in much endurance, in tribulations, in necessities, in hardships, in scourgings, in prisons, in tumults, in toils, in watchings, in fastings.’ Now comes the contrast, indicating that all these things are superficial trifles, the petty pin-pricks inflicted by the spite of the contemptible world, but underneath lie the solid realities:—‘in purity, in knowledge, in longsuffering, in kindness and goodness, in the holy spirit, in love unfeigned, in the word of truth, in the power of God.’
“This leads Paul to the thought of the armour of God, and the friends and enemies of God, the good and the evil, whichthis wandering Christian Hercules has to deal with: ‘By the arms of righteousness, on the right hand and on the left; by glory and dishonour; by ill report and good report—,’ he means, I think, ‘glory in the sight of God, dishonour in the sight of men,’ and again, ‘ill report on earth, good report in heaven.’ And so he continues, ‘as knaves and true’—that is, ‘knaves in appearance, in the world’s false judgment, but true men in the sight of Him who judges truly.’ It is a marvel of compression. And it is kept up in what follows:—‘misunderstood[i.e.by men]and well understood[i.e.by God];dying, and behold we live; under the headsman’s scourge, yet not beheaded; grieving, but always rejoicing; beggars, but making many rich; having nothing, yet having all things for ever!’
“You will be tired of this. But your zeal for your new teacher brought it on you. You admire his ‘fervour.’ Then what do you think of this man’s fervour? He could give points to Epictetus both for fervour and for compression. I admit that Paul has not your master’s dramatic flash, irony, and epigrammatic twist. But, as for ‘fervour,’ here, I contend, is the original Falernian, which your friend Epictetus has watered down. Not that I blame him, either as regards style or in respect of morality. His humorous description of the nursery troubles of the married Stoic was very good—for his purpose, and for a lecture. But it would not have suited Paul. A lecturer must not be too brief. If Epictetus were to pack stuff in his lectures as Paul packs it in his epistles, your lesson would sometimes not last five minutes.
“But I am straying from the question, which is, whether Epictetus borrowed. Let me give you another instance. The Christians are permeated with two notions, the first is, that they have received an ‘invitation,’ ‘summons,’ or ‘calling’ (Klēsisthey call it) to a heavenly Feast in a Kingdom of Heaven. The second is, that, if they are to attain to this Feast, they must pass through suffering and persecution, by ‘witnessing’ or ‘testifying’ to Christ, as being their King, in opposition to the Gods of the Romans. This ‘witness,’ ormartyria, is so closely associated in their minds with the notion of persecution that ‘martyrdom,’ with them, has come to imply,almost always, death. Now, as far as I know, the Greeks do not anywhere use the word ‘calling’ in this sense. But look at what Epictetus says about a sham philosopher, who, having been ‘called’ by God to be a beggar, ‘disgraces hiscalling’: ‘How then dost thou mount the stage now? It is in the character of a witnesscalledby God, who says “Come thou, and bear witness to me.”’ Then the sham philosopher whines out, ‘I am in a terrible strait, O Lord, and most unfortunate. None take thought for me; none give to me. All blame me. All speak evil of me.’ To which Epictetus replies, ‘Is this the witness thou wouldst bear,bringing shame on the calling wherewith He hath called thee, in that He honoured thee with so great an honour, and counted theeworthyto be promoted to the high task of such a witnessing?’ Now this phrase, ‘worthy of the calling,’ is Pauline in thought, and Pauline in word. Here is an instance, from a letter to the Thessalonians, ‘That our God wouldcount you worthy of the calling.’ And Paul writes to the Ephesians, ‘That ye walkworthily of the calling wherewith ye were called.’
“Again, you yourself remarked to me on the strangeness and originality of Epictetus’s expression about ‘eating,’ namely, that, in the very act of eating, or going to the gymnasium, or whatever else, the philosopher was to remember that he was ‘feeding on God’ and ‘carrying about God,’ and that he must not ‘defile’ the image of the God within him. Well, I admit it is strange, but I do not admit that it is original. I can match it in the first place with another passage from Epictetus himself, where he bids some of his uppish pupils, who wished to reform the world, first to reform themselves. ‘In this way,’ he said, ‘when eating, help those who eat with you; when drinking, those who drink with you.’ In the next place, I can match both out of the letter to the Corinthians, which says, ‘Ye areGod’s temple,’ and ‘If anyone destroysGod’s temple, him will God destroy,’ and again, ‘Your body isthe temple of the Holy Spirit, which ye have from God.’ It adds that people cause shame to others and injury to themselves by greediness at the sacred meals they take in common; and lastly, says Paul, ‘Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all tothe glory of God.’ There are things like this, of course, in Seneca, but none, as far as I know, that come so near as Epictetus does to the language of Paul.
“I could quote more from Paul, and also from other sacred books of the Christians, to shew that Epictetus is indebted to them. But I have been already led on by the fascination—to me it is a fascination—of a merely literary discussion, to say more than enough, and a great deal more than I intended. Let me conclude with an extract from a letter I lately rummaged up from my dear old friend Pliny, whom I greatly miss. He was the former Governor of Bithynia about whom you wrote. It refers to a very fine fellow, Artemidorus by name, a military tribune, son-in-law of the excellent Musonius (Epictetus’s teacher, whom I mentioned above). ‘Among the whole multitude of those who in these days call themselves philosophers, you will hardly find one so sincere, genuine, and true, as Artemidorus. I say nothing about his bodily endurance of heat and cold and the most arduous toil, of his indifference to the pleasures of the table, of the strict control with which he keeps his eyes and his passions in order. These are great virtues, but only great in others. In him they are but trifles compared with his other merits.’
“So wrote Pliny. Well, for me at all events, ‘to keep eyes and passions in order’ is not ‘a trifle.’ Perhaps it is not ‘a trifle’ for you. I fully believe that Musonius’s successor—for as such I regard Epictetus—in spite of some opinions in which I cannot quite follow him, will help you to attain this object. Give yourself wholly to that. I knew Artemidorus. So did your father. We both thought him the model of a soldier and a gentleman. Believe me, my dear Quintus, it would be one of the greatest comforts in my last moments if I could feel assured that—to some slight extent in consequence of advice from me—the son of my old friend Decimus Junius Silanus was following in the footsteps of one whom he so esteemed and admired. Farewell.”
This was the end of the letter. But out of it dropped a paper containing a sealed note. On the paper were these words: “To convince you that I had not judged your philosopherunfairly, I transcribed a few passages from other Christian documents, containing words assigned by Christians to Christ himself, which seem to me to have influenced Epictetus. On second thoughts, I have come to think it was waste of my time. That it might not waste yours too, I was on the point of throwing the thing into the fire. But I decided to send it rather than let you suppose me to be a crotchety, suspicious, prejudiced old man, ungenerous towards one whom both you and I respect with all our hearts. I grant that I am slow to believe in newfacts; but I need hardly assure you, my dearest Quintus, that I am not slow to believe in goodmotives—the motives of good men, tried, tested, and proved, by such severe trials as have befallen your admirable Master. Rather than suspect me thus, break the seal and read it at once. But I hope you will not want to read it. Discussions of this sort must not be allowed to distract your energies as they might do. Better burn it. Or keep it—till you are military tribune.”
[1]In “Notes on Silanus,” 2809a, the author repeats this offer.
[1]In “Notes on Silanus,” 2809a, the author repeats this offer.
I did not open the sealed note, though I was not convinced that Epictetus had been a borrower. Paulus the Christian had begun to interest me, because of Scaurus’s quotations and remarks on his style. Indeed he interested me so much that I determined at once to procure a copy of his letters. But Christus himself—whom I call Christus here to distinguish the meaning with which I used the name then from that with which I began to use the name of “Christ” soon afterwards—Christus, I say, at that moment, did not interest me at all.
Moreover I was impressed by what Scaurus said about a military career. Though too young to remember much about the shameful days of Domitian, yet I had heard my father describe the anguish he used to feel, when letters from the Emperor to the Senate came announcing a glorious victory (duly honoured with a triumph) after which would come a private letter from Scaurus informing him that the victory was a disgraceful defeat. And even later on, even after the successes of Trajan, my father, in conversations with Scaurus, had often expressed, in my hearing, still lingering apprehensions of a time when the barbarians might break in like a flood upon the northern borders of the empire—if ever the imperial throne were cursed with a second Domitian. Patriotism would be even more needed then, he said, than when Marius beat back the Cimbri. All this gave additional weight to Scaurus’s remarks. “Artemidorus,” I said, “shall be my model. I will try to be a good soldier and a good Stoic in one.” So I locked up the note, still sealed.
Here I may say that afterwards, when I did open it, it did not greatly influence the course of my thoughts. By that time, I had come to think that Scaurus was right, and that Epictetus had really borrowed from the Christians. I opened it, therefore, not because I distrusted the fairness and soundness of his judgment, but because I trusted it and looked to him for information. As a fact, it rather confirmed his hypothesis of borrowing, but did not demonstrate anything. The real influence of that little note in my cabinet amounted, I think, to little more than this. In the period I am now about to describe, while daily studying the works of Paulus the Christian, I was beginning to ask myself “If Paulus the follower of Christus was so great a teacher, must not Christus have been greater?” In those days, when taking out Paul’s epistles from my bookcase, I used often to see that packet lying there, with WORDS OF CHRISTUS on it, and the seal unbroken. Then I used to say “If only I could make up my mind to open you, you might tell me wonderful things.” This stimulated my curiosity. It was one of many things—some little, some great—that led me toward my goal.
The reader may perhaps think that I, a Roman of equestrian rank, must have been already more prone to the Christian religion than I have admitted, if I attempted to procure a copy of Paul’s epistles from a bookseller in Nicopolis frequented by my fellow-students. But I made no such attempt. Possibly our bookseller there would not have had a copy. Probably he would not have confessed it if he had. In any case, I did not ask him. It happened that I needed at this time certain philosophic treatises (of Chrysippus and others). So I wrote to a freedman of my father’s in Rome, an enterprising bookseller, who catered for various tastes, giving him the titles of these works and telling him how to prepare and ornament them. Then I added that Æmilius Scaurus had sent me some remarkable extracts from the works of one Paulus, a Christian, and that the volume seemed likely to be interesting as a literary curiosity. This was perhaps a little understating the case. But not much. With Flaccus, my Roman bookseller, I felt quite safe. Rather than buy Paul’s epistles from Sosia inNicopolis, I am sure I should not have bought them at all. Such are the trifles in our lives on which sometimes our course may depend—or may seem to have depended.
Meantime I had been attending lectures regularly and had become familiar with many of Epictetus’s frequently recurring expressions of doctrine. They were still almost always interesting, and generally impressive. But his success in forcing me to “feel, for the moment, precisely what he felt”—how often did I recognise the exact truth of this phrase of Arrian’s!—made me begin to distrust myself. And from distrust of myself sprang distrust of his teaching, too, when I found the feeling fade away (time after time) upon leaving the lecturer’s presence. When I sat down in my rooms to write out my notes, asking myself, “Can I honestly say I hope to be ever able to do this or that?” how often was I obliged to answer, “No!”
I could not trust his judgment about what we should be able to do, because I could not trust his insight into what we were. Two causes seemed to keep him out of sympathy with us. One was his own singular power of bearing physical pain—almost as though he were a stone and not flesh and blood. He thought that we had the same, or ought to have it. Another cause was his absorption in something that was not human, in a conception of God, whom (on some evidence clear to him but not made clear by him to us, or at all events not to me) heknew(not trusted or believed, butknew) to have bestowed on him, Epictetus, the power of being at once—not in the future, but at once, here on earth, at all times, and in all circumstances—perfectly blessed. Having his eyes fixed on this Supreme Giver of Peace, our Master often seemed to me hardly able to bring himself to look down to us, except when he was chiding our weakness.
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 subjectof “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 threatenyouthen?” 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.”
Here Epictetus—after some customary technicalities—turned to us like a showman, to explain the royal puppet’s condition: “‘Howneglected?’ you ask. He does not know the essence of the Good for which he has been created by nature, nor the essence of evil. He cries out, ‘Woe is me, the Greeks are in peril’ because he has not learned to distinguish what is really his own etc. etc.” After this apostrophe, which I have condensed, he resumed the dialogue:
“Ag.They are all dead men. The Trojans will exterminate them.
“Epict.And if the Trojans do not kill them, they are never, never to die, I suppose!!
“Ag.O, yes, they’ll die. But not at one blow, not to a man, like this.
“Epict.What difference does it make? If dying is an evil, then, surely, whether they die all together or one by one, it is equally an evil. And do you really think that dying will be anything more than the separating of the paltry body from the soul?
“Ag.Nothing more.
“Epict.And you, when the Greeks are in the act of perishing, is the door of escape shut for you? Is it not open to you to die?
“Ag.It is.
“Epict.Why then bewail? Bah! You, a king! And with the sceptre of Zeus, too! A king is never unfortunate, any more than God is unfortunate. What then are you? A shepherd in truth! For you weep, like the shepherds—when a wolf carries off one of their sheep. And these Greeks are fine sheep to submit to being ruled over by you. Why did you ever begin this Trojan business? Was your desire imperilled etc. etc.?” [Here I omit more technicalities.]
“Ag.No, but my brother’s darling wife was carried away.
“Epict.And was not that a great blessing, to be deprived of a ‘darling wife’ who was an adulteress?
“Ag.Were we then to submit to be trampled on by the Trojans?
“Epict.Trojans? What are the Trojans? Wise or foolish? If wise, why make war against them? If foolish, why care for them?”
I doubt whether Epictetus quite carried his class with him on this occasion. He certainly did not carry me, though he went on consistently pouring out various statements of his theory. For the first time in my experience of his lectures, I began to feel that his reiterations were really tedious. My thoughts strayed. I found myself questioning whether my model soldier and philosopher, Artemidorus, could possibly accept this teaching. Would Trajan, I asked, have been so sure of beating Decebalus, if he had considered the disgrace of Rome a matter “independent of choice,” and therefore “nothing to him,” “neither good nor evil”?
From this reverie I was roused by a sudden transition—to a picture of a well-trained youth going forth to a conflict worthy of his mettle. And now, I thought, we shall have something more like the ideal of my first lecture, a Hercules or Diogenes, going about to help and heal. But perhaps Epictetus drew a distinction between a Diogenes and mere well-trained youths, mere beginners in philosophy. At all events, what followed was only a kind of catechism to prepare us against adversity, and especially against official oppression. “Whenever,” said he, “you are in the act of going into the judgment hall of one in authority, remember that there is also Another from above, taking note of what is going on, and that you must please Him rather than the authority on earth.” This catechism he threw into the form of a dialogue between the youth and God—whom he called “Another.”
“Another.Exile, prison, bonds, death, and disgrace—what used you to call these things in the Schools?
“Pupil.I? Things indifferent.
“Another.Well, then, what do you call them now? Can it be thattheyhave changed?
“Pupil.They have not.
“Another.You, then—haveyouchanged?
“Pupil.I have not.
“Another.Say, then, what are ‘things indifferent’?
“Pupil.The things outside choice.
“Another.Say also the next words.
“Pupil.Things indifferent are nothing to me.
“Another.Say also about things good. What things used you to think good?
“Pupil.Right choice, right use of phenomena.
“Another.And what the end and object?
“Pupil.To follow thee.
“Another.Do you say the same things still?
“Pupil.I say the same things still.
“Another.Go your way, then, and be of good cheer, and remember these things, and you will see how a young and well-trained champion towers above the untrained.”
I wanted to hear him explain why he spoke of “Another,” instead of Zeus, or God. It struck me that he meant to suggest to us that in this visible world, whenever we say “this,” we must also say, in our minds, “another,” to remind ourselves of the invisible counterpart. “Especially must we say ‘Another’”—this, I thought, was his meaning—“when we speak about rulers. Visible rulers are mostly bad. We must prevent them from encroaching on the place that should be filled in our hearts by the Other, the invisible Ruler.”
Instead of this explanation, however, he concluded his lecture by warning us against insincerity, or “speaking from the lips,” and against trying to be on both sides, when we ought to choose between two contending sides. This he called “trimming.” And here it was—while addressing an imaginary “trimmer”—that he used the word “Jew.”
“Why,” said he—addressing the sham philosopher—“why do you try to impose on the multitude? Why pretend to be a Jew, being really a Greek? Whenever we see a man trimming, we are accustomed to say, ‘This fellow is no Jew, he is shamming.’ But when a man has taken into himselfthe feeling of the dipped and chosen”—these were his exact words, utteredwith a gesture and tone of contempt—“then he is, both in name and in very truth, a Jew. Even so it is with us, having merely a sham baptism; Jews in theory, but something else in fact; far away from any real feeling of our theory, and far away from any intention of putting into practice the professions on which we plume ourselves—as though we knew what they really meant!” I could not quite make out this allusion to Jews. But there was no mistaking his next sentence, and it was the last in the lecture, “So, I repeat, it is with us. We are not equal to the fulfilment of the responsibilities of common humanity, not even up to the standard of Man. Yet we would fain take on ourselves in addition the burden of a philosopher. And what a burden! It is as though a weakling, without power to carry a ten-pound weight, were to aspire to heave the stone of Ajax!”
Thus he dismissed us. I went out, feeling like the “weakling” indeed, but without the slightest “aspiration to heave the stone of Ajax.” Perhaps Arrian wished to encourage me. For after we had walked on awhile in silence, he said, “The Master was rather cutting to-day. I remember his once saying that we ought to come away from him, not as from a theatre but as from a surgery. To-day the surgeon used the knife, and we don’t like it.”
“But what good has the knife done us?” I exclaimed. “If only I could feel that the surgeon had cut out the mischief, a touch of the knife should not make me wince. But the mischief within me seems more mischievous, and my strength for good less strong, for some things that I have heard to-day. Is a Roman to say, when fighting against barbarians for the name and fame of Rome, ‘These things are nothing to me’? Is Diogenes, healing mankind, his brethren, to say, ‘Your diseases are nothing to me’? And that fine phrase in the Catechism, ‘follow thee’—is it not really a disguised form of ‘follow myself’? Does it not mean, ‘follow thelogoswithin me, my own reason, or my own reasonable will,’ or ‘follow my own peace of mind, on which my mind is bent, to the neglect of everything else’?”
“It does not mean that, for Epictetus himself, I am convinced,”said Arrian. “I believe not, for him,” said I; “but it has that meaning for me. His teaching does not teach—not me, at least, however it may be with others—the art of being steadfast. And what about others? Did not he himself just now admit that hislogoswas less powerful than thepathosof the Jews to produce steadfastness? What, by the way, is thispathos? Does it mean passionate and unreasonable conviction? And who on earth are these Jews that are ‘dipped and chosen’?”
My friend’s face brightened. Perhaps it was a relief to him to pass from theology to matter of literary fact. “I think,” he replied, “that he must mean the Jewish followers of Christus—the Christians, about whom we were lately talking.” “Then why,” said I, “does not he call them Christians?” “I do not know,” replied Arrian, “He has never mentioned either Christians or Christus in my hearing; but he has, in one lecture at all events, used the term ‘Galilæans’ to mean the Christians. And I feel sure that he means them here, because the other Jews do not practise baptism, except for proselytes, whereas the Christians are all baptized.” “But,” said I, “he does not call them ‘baptized.’ He calls them ‘dipped’.” “That is his brief allusive way,” said Arrian. “You know that we provincials, and sometimes even Athenians too, speak ofdippingthe hair, or, if I may invent the word,baptingit, where the literary people speak ofblackingordyeingit. That is just what our Master means. These Christians are not merelybaptized; they arebapted. That is to say, they are permanently and unalterably stained, or dyed in grain. They are. We are not. That is his meaning. Afterwards, as you noticed, he dropped into the regular word ‘baptism,’ and spoke of us assham-baptists.”
“But he also called themchosen,” said I, “—that is to say, if he meantchosen, and notcaughtorconvicted.” Arrian smiled. “You have hit the mark without knowing it,” said he. “I noticed the word and took it down. It is another of his jibes! These Christians actually call themselves ‘elect’ or ‘chosen.’ I heard all about it in Bithynia. They profess to have been ‘called’ by Christus. Then, if they obey this ‘calling,’ and remain steadfast, following Christus, they are said to be ‘chosen’or ‘elect.’ But our Master believes this ‘calling’ and ‘choosing’ to be moonshine, and these Christian Jews to be the victims of a mere delusion,caughtby error. So he uses a word that might mean ‘chosen’ but might mean also ‘caught.’ They think themselves the former. He thinks them the latter.”
I hardly know why I refrained from telling my friend what Scaurus had told me about the probability that Epictetus had borrowed from the Christians. Partly it was, I think, because it was too long a story to begin just then; and I thought I might shock Arrian and not do Scaurus justice. Partly, I was curious to question Arrian further. So after a short silence, during which my friend seemed lost in thought, I said to him, “You know more about the Christians than I do. Do you think Epictetus knows much about them? And what precisely does he mean by ‘feeling,’ when he speaks of ‘taking up thefeelingof the dipped’?”
“As for your first question,” said Arrian, “I am inclined to think that he knows a great deal about them. How could it be otherwise with a young slave in Rome under Nero, when all the world knew how the Christians were used to light the Emperor’s gardens? Moreover his contrast between the Jew and the Greek seemed to me to come forth as though it had been some time in his mind, though it had not broken out till to-day. He spoke with the bitterness of a conviction of long standing. If—contrary to his own rules—he could be ‘troubled,’ I should say our Master felt a real ‘trouble’ in being forced to confess that the Jew is above the Greek in steadfastness and constancy. As to your second question, I think he means that, whereas Greeks attain to wisdom through the reason (orlogos) these Jews follow their God, or Christus, through what we Greeks call emotion or affection (i.e.pathos). And I am half disposed to think that this wordpathoswas used by him on the other occasion when he spoke of the Christian Jews as Galilæans.” “Could you quote it?” said I. “No, not accurately,” said Arrian, “it is rather long, and has difficulties. I should prefer you to have it exactly. Come into my rooms. I am going out on business, so that we cannot talk about it at present. But you shall copy it down.”
So I went in to copy it down. Arrian left me after finding the place for me in his notes. “You will see,” he said, “that the Galilæans are there described as being made intrepid ‘by habit.’ Well, that is certainly how I took the words down. But I am inclined to think it might have been ‘by feeling’—which seems to me to make better sense. But read the whole context and judge for yourself. The two phrases are easily confused. Now I leave you to your copying.Prosit!More about this, to-morrow.”
The lecture from which I was transcribing was on “fearlessness.” What, it asked, makes a tyrant terrible? The answer was, “his armed guards.” A child, or madman, not knowing what guards and weapons mean, would not fear him. Men fear because they love life, and a tyrant can take life. Men also love wealth, wife, children. These things, too, a tyrant can take; so men fear him. But a madman, caring for none of these things, and ready to throw them away as a child might throw a handful of sand—a madman does not fear. Now came the words about “custom” and “Galilæans” to which Arrian had called my attention: “Well, then, is not this astonishing? Madness can now and then make a man thus fearless!Custom can make the Galilæans fearless!Yet—strange to say—reason and demonstration cannot make anyone understand that God has made all that is in the world, and has made the world itself, in its entirety, absolutely complete in itself and unimpeded in its motions, and has also made its separate parts individually for the use of all the parts collectively!”
The context made me see the force of Arrian’s remark. Epictetus appeared to be mentioning three influences under which men might resist the threats and tortures of a tyrant. In the first place was the “madness” of a lunatic. In the third place was the “logic,” or demonstration, of philosophy. In the second place, it would make good sense to suppose that Epictetus meant “feeling,” or “passionate enthusiasm.” This passage would then accord with the one mentioned above. Bothpassages would then affirm that the Christian Jews or Galilæans can do under the influence of “feeling” what the Greek Philosophers, or “lovers of wisdom,” cannot do with all the aid of reason (or “logos”). “Custom” would not make good sense unless the “Galilæans,” or Christians, had made a “custom” of hardening their bodies by severe asceticism. This (I had gathered from Arrian) was not the fact. In any case, it seemed clear that Epictetus was here again contrasting some kind of Jew with the Greek to the disadvantage of the latter.
Curiosity led me to read on a little further. The text dealt with Man’s place in the Cosmos, or Universe, as follows: “All the other parts of the Cosmos except man are far removed from the power of intelligently following its administration. But the living being that is endowed withlogos, or reason, has therein a kind of ladder by which he may reason the way up to all these things. Thus he, and he alone, can understand that he is a part, and what kind of part, and that it is right and fit that the parts should yield to the whole.” This reminded me of the saying I have quoted above, “Will you not make a contribution of your leg to the Universe?” I think he meant “Will you not offer up your lameness, as a decreed part of the whole system of things, and as a sacrifice from you to the Supreme?”
This reasonable part of the Cosmos, this “living being that is endowed withlogos,” Epictetus declared to be “by naturenoble, magnanimous, and free.” Consequently, said he, it discerns that, of the things around it, some are at its disposal, while others are not; and that, if it will learn to find its profit and its good in the former class, it will be perfectly free and happy, “being thankful always for all things to God.”
This puzzled me not a little. I could not understand how Epictetus explained the means by which these “noble, magnanimous, and free” creatures, created so “by nature,” had degenerated into the weaklings, fools, profligates, and oppressors, upon whom he was constantly pouring scorn. Was not each man a “part” of the Cosmos? Was not the Cosmos “perfect and exempt from all disorder or impediment in any of its motions”? Did not each “part” in it—and consequentlyman—partake in this perfection and exemption, being “made for the service of the whole”? What cause did Epictetus find for the folly, vice, and injustice that he so often satirised and condemned as “subject to the wrath of God”? Man was a compound of “clay” and “logos.” The fault could not lie in the “logos.” Was it, after all, the mere “clay” that caused all this mischief? And then, lost in thought, turning over the loose sheets of Arrian’s notes, one after the other, I came again on the passage I have quoted above from Epictetus, “If I could have, I would have”—laying the fault, as it seemed, upon the “clay.” I could not help asking, “If God ‘could’ not remedy it, how much less ‘could’ I, being ‘clay,’ remedy myself, ‘clay’?”
Musing on these things I returned to my rooms, and was sitting down to write to Scaurus, when my servant entered with a parcel, from Rome, he said, forwarded by Sosia our bookseller. It contained the books I had ordered from Flaccus, with a letter from him, describing in detail the pains he had taken in having some of the rolls of Chrysippus and Cleanthes transcribed and ornamented, and saying that in addition to the “curious little volume containing the epistles of Paulus,” which, as I no doubt anticipated, were “not in the choicest Greek,” he had forwarded an epistle to the Hebrews. “This,” he said, “does not include in the commencement the usual mention of Paulus’s name, and it is not in his style. But I understand that it originated from the school of Paulus.”
There was more to the same effect, for Flaccus and I were on very friendly terms; and he was a good deal more than a mere seller of books. But I passed over it, for I was in haste to open the parcel. At the top were the copies of Cleanthes, Chrysippus, and others, in Flaccus’s best style. At the bottom of all were two rolls of flimsy papyrus. The larger and shabbier of the two fell to the ground open, and as I took it up, my eye lit on the following passage:—“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or suffering or persecution or hunger or nakedness or peril or the sword? As it is written: