Discourses by Epictetus (good books to read for beginners txt) 📕

as you say, let not this console you at all: but know that you are a slave in a great family. So also the people of Nicopolis are used to exclaim, “By the fortune of Caesar,618 we are free.”

However, if you please, let us not speak of Caesar at present. But tell me this: did you never love any person, a young girl, or slave, or free? “What then is this with respect to being a slave or free?” Were you never commanded by the person beloved to do something which you did not wish to do? have you never flattered your little slave? have you never kissed her feet? And yet if any man compelled you to kiss Caesar’s feet, you would think it an insult and excessive tyranny. What else then is slavery? Did you never go out by night to some place whither you did not wish to go, did you not expend that you did not wish to expend, did you not utter words with sighs and groans, did you not submit to abuse and to be excluded?619 But if you are ashamed to confess your own acts, see what Thrasonides620 says and does, who having seen so much military service as perhaps not even you have, first of all went out by night, when Geta (a slave) does not venture out, but if he were compelled by his master would have cried out much and would have gone out lamenting his bitter slavery. Next, what does Thrasonides say? “A worthless girl has enslaved me, me whom no enemy ever did.” Unhappy man, who are the slave even of a girl, and a worthless girl. Why then do you still call yourself free? and why do you talk of your service in the army? Then he calls for a sword and is angry with him who out of kindness refuses it; and he sends presents to her who hates him, and entreats and weeps, and on the other hand having had a little success he is elated. But even then how? was he free enough neither to desire nor to fear?

Now consider in the case of animals, how we employ the notion of liberty. Men keep tame lions shut up, and feed them, and some take them about; and who will say that this lion is free?621 Is it not the fact that the more he lives at his ease, so much the more he is in a slavish condition? and who if he had perception and reason would wish to be one of these lions? Well, these birds when they are caught and are kept shut up, how much do they suffer in their attempts to escape?622 and some of them die of hunger rather than submit to such a kind of life. And as many of them as live, hardly live and with suffering pine away; and if they ever find any opening, they make their escape. So much do they desire their natural liberty, and to be independent and free from hindrance. And what harm is there to you in this? What do you say? I am formed by nature to fly where I choose, to live in the open air, to sing when I choose: you deprive me of all this, and say, what harm is it to you? For this reason we shall say that those animals only are free which cannot endure capture, but as soon as they are caught escape from captivity by death. So Diogenes also somewhere says that there is only one way to freedom, and that is to die content: and he writes to the Persian king. “You cannot enslave the Athenian state any more than you can enslave fishes.” How is that? cannot I catch them? “If you catch them,” says Diogenes, “they will immediately leave you, as fishes do; for if you catch a fish, it dies; and if these men that are caught shall die, of what use to you is the preparation for war?” These are the words of a free man who had carefully examined the thing, and, as was natural, had discovered it. But if you look for it in a different place from where it is, what wonder if you never find it?

The slave wishes to be set free immediately. Why? Do you think that he wishes to pay money to the collectors of twentieths?623 No; but because he imagines that hitherto, through not having obtained this, he is hindered and unfortunate. If I shall be set free, immediately it is all happiness, I care for no man, I speak to all as an equal and like to them, I go where I choose, I come from any place I choose, and go where I choose. Then he is set free; and forthwith having no place where he can eat, he looks for some man to flatter, someone with whom he shall sup: then he either works with his body and endures the most dreadful things;624 and if he can obtain a manger, he falls into a slavery much worse than his former slavery; or even if he is become rich, being a man without any knowledge of what is good, he loves some little girl, and in his unhappiness laments and desires to be a slave again. He says, “what evil did I suffer in my state of slavery? Another clothed me, another supplied me with shoes, another fed me, another looked after me in sickness; and I did only a few services for him. But now a wretched man, what things I suffer, being a slave to many instead of to one. But however,” he says, “if I shall acquire rings625 then I shall live most prosperously and happily.” First, in order to acquire these rings, he submits to that which he is