Chapter 8

1.Zealous for evil things.—Epictetus must mean things which they know to be evil—evil thingsasevil. It was a Socratic doctrine which we find again alluded to in this chapter, that no evil is ever willingly or wittingly done.

2.A favorite theme of later Greek and of Roman comedy was the rivalship in love of a father and a son.

3.Admetus, husband of Alcestis, being told by an oracle that his wife must die if no one offered himself in her stead, thought to lay the obligation on his father, as being an old man with but few more years to live. The first verse quoted is from theAlcestisof Euripides; the second is not found in any extant version of that play.

4.Eteocles and Polyneices, sons of Œdipus, quarreled with each other about the inheritance of their father’s kingdom. Eteocles having gained possession of it, Polyneices brought up the famous seven kings, his allies, against Thebes, and fell in battle there by his brother’s hand, whom he also killed. The verses quoted are from thePhœnissæof Euripides.

5.Schweighäuser interprets this passage to mean that these men occupy the public places as wild beasts do the mountains, to prey on others. If we might read ὡς τὰ θηρία for ὡς τὰ ὄρη, we should get a less obscure sense, “haunt the wilderness—I should say the public places—like wild beasts.” The passage is clearly corrupt somewhere.

6.Polyneices bribed Eriphyle with the gift of this necklace to persuade her unwilling husband to march with him against Thebes where he died.

1.The allusion is toOdyssey, v. 82-4. “But he was sitting on the beach and weeping, where he was wont; and tormented his spirit with tears and groanings and woes, and wept as he gazed over the barren sea.”

2.Let him pity.—See Bk. I., ch. viii.,note3.

1.The conflagration.—See Preface for an account of the Stoic Doctrine of theWeltverbrennung.

2.Long suggests that the words translated “air to air” might be equally well rendered “spirit to spirit” (ὅσον πνευματίου εἰς πνευμάτιον), thus finding a place for the soul in this enumeration of the elements of man. But this metaphysical division of man’s nature into a spiritual part and a material part would have been wholly contrary to Stoic teaching, which admitted no existence that was not material. As a matter of fact, if any of the terms in this enumeration is to be understood as meaning soul or spirit, it will be fire rather than air.

3.Gods and Powers.—θεῶν καὶ Δαιμόνων.

1.To strangle lions or embrace statues.—Hercules did the former, and ostentatious philosophers sometimes did the latter in winter-time, by way of showing their power of endurance.

2.The stamp of Nero.—I believe there is no other record than this of any rejection of Nero’s coins, and those which have come down to us are of perfectly good quality. He was declared a public enemy by the Senate, and possibly it was decreed at the same time that his coins should be withdrawn from circulation. Dion, quoted by Wise (apudSchweighäuser), reports that this was done in the case of Caligula, after the death of that tyrant.

3.Lions at home, but in Ephesus foxes.—“A proverb about the Spartans, who were defeated in Asia,” notes the Scholiast on Aristoph. Pac., 1188-90.

1.Nor can I move without thy knowledge.—From Homer,Il.x. 279, 280, Odysseus to Athene.

2.The Genius of each man.—τὸν ἐκάστον Δαίμονα.

1.A way wherein to walk.—Literally, the power of using a way. It seems to me likely that this term, way—ὁδός, here signifies the Stoic philosophy, just as in the early Church it was used to signify Christianity (e. g.,Actsxxii. 4, and xix. 9, 23).

1.Nor have any object in themselves.—Readers of Lotze will be reminded of the term Fürsichseinheit, used by him to denote the self-centered quality of true Being. The Greek here is οὐκ ἀυτὰ προηγούμενα, προηγούμενα, being the word used in Bk. I. viii. 13, and Bk. III. v. 5, for the leading objects or obligations of man.

2.Would that I had you with me!—In Long’s translation the pronounyouis explained to mean God. I can see no reason for this interpretation. The words are, I think, supposed to be uttered by a disciple to his master: they are such as Epictetus may have heard from many of his own disciples as they left him to take their part in the world of action.

3.Cautious assent—i. e., caution in allowing oneself to entertain the impressions of appearances.

1.The strong and growing yearning for some direct, personal revelation of God, some supernatural manifestation of His existence and care for men, is noted by Zeller as a special trait of Hellenistic times. Such a revelation must have been longed for by many as the only satisfying answer to the destructive logic of the Pyrrhonists, and men’s minds were also of course led that way by the insistence of the Stoic thinkers upon the communion of the individual with God, as the most important of all possible relations. Hence the growth of many wild and orgiastic cults at this epoch—allbased on the state of ecstasy connected with their rites, which was ascribed to supernatural influence. With the Stoics this movement took the comparatively sober shape of attention to the established system of oracular divination. Zeller, however, shows that some Stoics were disposed to rationalize the revelations of the oracles by supposing a certain sympathy between the mind of the seer and the future events which led to the unconscious selection of means of divination which would exhibit the proper signs.—(Z. 339, 340.) Epictetus evidently thought more of God’s revelation in the conscience than any other.

2.The story is told by Simplicius in his commentary on this chapter. Two friends, journeying together to inquire of the oracle at Delphi, were set upon by robbers; one of them resisted, and was murdered, the other either fled or made no effort on his companion’s behalf. Arriving at the temple of Apollo, he was greeted with the following deliverance of the oracle:—“Thou saw’st thy friend all undefended die—Foul with that sin, from Phœbus’ temple fly.”

“Thou saw’st thy friend all undefended die—Foul with that sin, from Phœbus’ temple fly.”

1.Simplicius explains that the oath was to be refused, because to call God to witness in any merely personal and earthly interest implies a want of reverence towards Him; but that if there were a question of pledging one’s faith on behalf of friends, or parents, or country, it was not improper to add the confirmation of an oath.

2.Upton quotes allusions to these recitations from Juvenal, Martial, and Pliny. Authors would read their own works and invite crowds of flatterers to attend. Epict.Diss.iii. 23. (Schweighäuser) is a scornful diatribe against the pretentious people who held forthon these occasions, and the people who assembled to hear and applaud them. He contrasts with fashionable reciters and lecturers his own master, Rufus. “Rufus was wont to say,I speak to no purpose, if ye have time to praise me. And, verily, he spoke in such a way that every man who sat there thought that some one had accused him to Rufus, he so handled all that was going on, he so set before each man’s eyes his faults.”

3.Into vulgarity—εἰς ἰδιωτισμόν.

1.The sophism, or puzzle, called the Liar, ran thus:—A liar says he lies: if it is true, he is no liar; and if he lies, he is speaking truth. The Quiescent (ὁ ἡσυχάζων) was an invention attributed by Cicero to Chrysippus (Acad. ii. 29). When asked of a gradually-increasing number of things to say when they ceased to be few and became many, he was wont to cease replying, or be “quiescent,” shortly before the limit was reached—a device which we have some difficulty in regarding as a fair example of Chrysippus’s contributions to the science of logic. For the master sophism see Bk. II. chap. i.,note1.

2.Plato,Laws, ix.:—“When any of such opinions visit thee, go to the purifying sacrifices, go and pray in the temples of the protecting Gods, go to the society of men whom thou hast heard of as good; and now hear from others, now say for thine own part, that it behooves every man to hold in regard the things that are honorable and righteous. But from the company of evil men, fly without a look behind. And if in doing these things thy disease give ground, well; but if not, hold death the better choice, and depart from life.”

3.The true athlete.—Literally, ascetic, ἀσκητής;i. e., practicer.

4.The Dioscuri, or Twins, Castor and Pollux, were the patron deities of sailors.

1.If viewed disjunctively.—That is, if we say, It is day, or, It is night. This is a difficult chapter, and full of corruptions. The feast alluded to is, doubtless, the feast of life, where the Gods are the hosts.

1.Winter training.—Such as the Roman troops underwent when in winter-quarters. They were accustomed to exercise themselves with arms of double the normal weight, and prepare themselves by marching, running, leaping, etc., for active service.

11. The Pancratium was a contest in which boxing and wrestling were both allowable. For the Pentathlon, see Bk. II. chap, xvii.,note3.

1.This means, apparently, that the judgment has no right to do more than endorse the deliverances of the perceptive faculty. If a man commits any error, he does it under the conviction that it is in some way for his profit or satisfaction; that is, that there is something of the nature of the Good in it. He may be mistaken in this; but so long as he does not know where Good and Evil really lie, he can do no other than he does. The true course, then, for the philosopher is not to condemn him for his actions, but to show him the fundamental error from which they proceed. The expression, “assent,” συγκατατίθεσθαι, is that used by Epictetus in II. vi., etc., where he speaks of the mind as being imposed on, or taken captive, by the outward shows of things.

1.The Greek is Ἐπειδὴ λόγος ἐστὶν ὁ διαρθρῶν καὶ ἐξεργαζόμενος τὰ λοιπά. διαρθρόω means, literally, to fashion with joints, hence constitute organically, with interdependence of parts. Long translates “analyze.”

2.Modius.—A measure of about two gallons.

3.Antisthenes, about 400b. c., founder of the Cynic school, which was established by him in the gymnasium called the Cynosarges (hence the name). As a Cynic, his authority would, of course, be respected by the hearers of Epictetus. This investigation of terms, or names, is, indeed, the beginning of philosophy and the guide to truth in any sphere, but perhaps not every one is competent to undertake it. There must be a real and not merely a formal appreciation of the contents of each term. A primrose is one thing to Peter Bell and another to Wordsworth. The term, let us say, Duty, is one thing to a Herbert Spencer and another to a Kant.

1.“My friends, fly all culture,” is an injunction reported of Epicurus (Diog. L.x. 6). However, neglect of form in literary style was a characteristic of philosophic writers of the Hellenistic period, which was by no means confined to the Epicureans.

2.This passage is corrupt. I follow the reading adopted by Schweighäuser (after Wolf); but it may be noted that Schweighäuser’s translation follows another reading than that which he adopts in his text, viz.—κινουμένου (being moved), instead of τεινομένου (being strained). The original, in all versions, is γινομένου, which makes no sense at all.—See Preface, xxiii.

3.The writings enumerated are, of course, works of Epicurus. When dying, he wrote in a letter to a friend (Diog. L.x. 22) that he was spending a happy day, and his last.

4.Stoic ἀπάθεια was anything but insensibility. Chrysippus held that many things in the Kosmos were created for their beauty alone.—Zeller, 171.

5.There is another short chapter on the arts of ratiocination and expression (I. viii.Schw.), which glances at the subject from a somewhat different point of view from that taken in the chapter which I have given. There Epictetus dwells chiefly on the danger that weak spirits should lose themselves in the fascination of these arts: “For, in general, in every faculty acquired by the uninstructed and feeble there is danger lest they be elated and puffed up through it. For how could one contrive to persuade a young man who excels in such things that he must not be an appendage to them, but make them an appendage to him?”

1.The first of these quotations is from the Stoic Cleanthes, the second from a lost play of Euripides; in the third Epictetus has joined together two sayings of Socrates, one from theCritoand one from theApologia. Anytus and Meletus were the principal accusers of Socrates in the trial which ended in his sentence to death.

[I give under this head only those terms the exact force of which may not be apparent to the reader in a mere translation.]

Αἰδήμων.—Pious, reverent, modest. The substantive is αἰδώς, the German Ehrfurcht (Wilhelm Meister,Wanderjahre, Bk. II. ch. ii.), a virtue in high regard with Epictetus, who generally mentions it in connection with that of “faithfulness,” πίστις. In Wordsworth’s poem, “My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky,” the “natural piety” which he prays may abide with him in his old age seems to be just that moral sensitiveness or αἰδώς which passes into reverence and worship in the presence of certain things, and into shame and dread in that of others.

Ἀπάθεια.—Peace—that is, peace from passion, πάθη. Πάθος was any affection of the mind causing joy or grief. As it appears from Bk. II. iii. I., ἀπάθεια is not, in Epictetus, the state of absolute freedom from these passions, but that of being able to master them so that they shall not overwhelm the inner man.

Διαρθρωτικός.—That whichorganizes, constitutes organically, forms into a system. From ἄρθρον, a joint. The word “analyze,” by which Long translates διαρθροῦν, seems to me wanting in the formative sense expressed by the original.

Δόγμα.—An opinion, that which seems (δοκεῖν) true; generally in the special sense of a philosophic dogma.

Ἐυροεῖν.—To prosper; literally, to flow freely, εὔροια, prosperity. A common Stoic phrase for a happy life.

Εὐσέβεια.—Religion, piety. σέβομαι—“to feel aweorfearbefore God and man, especially when about to do something disgraceful” (Liddell and Scott); to worship, respect, reverence.

Ἡγεμονικόν (τό).—The Ruling Faculty—that in a man which chooses, determines, takes cognizance of good and evil, and sways the inferior faculties (δυνάμεις, powers) to its will. Lotze notes thishegemonicquality in the human soul as that which distinguishes it from the bundle of sensations into which the Association Philosophy would resolve it.

θαυμάζειν.—To admire, be dazzled with admiration by, to worship, to be taken up with a thing so as to lose the power of cool judgment. A frequent word in Epictetus, the sense of which is precisely rendered in Hor.Sat.I, 4, 28, “Hunc capit argenti splendor,stupetAlbius ære.”

Ἰδιώτης.—One of the vulgar, an unlettered person; in Epictetus, one uninstructed in philosophy. Originally the word meant one who remained in private life, not filling any public office, or taking part in State affairs. A man might be an ἰδιώτης, or “layman,” with respect to any branch of science or art.

Καλὸς καὶ ἀγαθός.—The good and wise man—literally, beautiful and good. A standing phrase to denote the perfection of human character. καλὸς is a word sometimes difficult to render. Curtius connects it etymologically with Sanscrit,kalyas; Gothic,hails=healthy.

Οἴησις.—“Conceit”—defined by Cicero as “Opinatio”—intellectual self-sufficiency, the supposing one’s self to know something when one does not. “The first businessof a philosopher,” says Epictetus, “is to cast away oἴησις, for it is impossible that one can begin to learn the things that he thinks he knows” (Diss.II. xvii. 1.) He is not, in short, to be “wise in his own conceit.”

ὄρεξις, ἔκκλισις, ὁρμή, ἀφορμή.—Pursuit, avoidance, desire, aversion. According to Simplicius (Comment.Ench.i.), ὄρεξις and ἔκκλισις were used by the Stoics to express the counterparts in outward action of the mental affections, ὁρμὴ and ἀφορμή, and were regarded as consequent upon the latter.

προαίρεσις.—The Will; but as used in Epictetus, this word implies much more than the mere faculty of volition. Literally, it means a choosing of one thing before another; in Epictetus, the power of deliberately resolving or purposing, the exercise of the reflective faculty being implied. It is hardly to be distinguished from τὸ ἡγεμονικόν,q. v.

προλήψεις.—“Natural Conceptions.” See Preface, xxviii., xxix. The “primary truths” of Lord Herbert of Cherbury.

Συγκατατίθεσθαι.—To assent to or acquiesce in anything, to ratify by the judgment the emotions produced by external things or events, such as the sense of dread, or pleasure, or reprobation, which they arouse in us. To be on one’s guard against the hasty yielding of this assent is one of Epictetus’s main injunctions to the aspirant in philosophy.

Ταράσσεσθαι.—To be troubled; ἀ-ταραξία, tranquillity. Ταράσσειν is primarily to stir up, confuse, throw into disorder.

φαντασία.—An appearance; with the Stoics, any mental impression as received by the perceptive faculty before the Reason has pronounced upon it, a bare perception.

[The references in the right-hand column are to the books, chapters, and verses of theDissertations, to the chapters of theEncheiridion, and to theFragments, in Schweighäuser’s edition of Epictetus.]

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