What Is Yours The Handbook and Discourses of Epictetus Adapted by Daimon Classics Released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ ISBN: 9798995868019 Edition: 1, Daimon Classics, 2026 ============================================================ ------------------------------------------------------------ The Slave Who Taught Emperors ------------------------------------------------------------ Around the year 55 AD, in a town called Hierapolis in what is now Türkiye, a child was born to a woman who was a slave. That made him a slave too. His owners sent him to Rome. He was sold to a rich and powerful man named Epaphroditus, who had once been a slave himself but had worked his way up to become secretary to the Emperor Nero. Epaphroditus gave the boy a name that matched his new life: Epictetus, which means "acquired" or "bought." No one knows the boy's real name. At some point during his time as a slave, his leg was broken. Some stories say his master twisted it until it snapped. Others say it was an old injury that never healed right. Either way, Epictetus walked with a limp for the rest of his life. He said almost nothing about it in his teaching, except to note that the body is not the part of us that matters most. Epaphroditus let him study philosophy. In Rome in those years, that was almost as good as letting him go free. He sat under a Stoic teacher named Musonius Rufus and took in everything he could. When he was finally given his freedom, he stayed in Rome and began teaching on his own. Rome was not a safe place to be a teacher of philosophy. The Emperor Domitian, who did not like anyone who might get people to think for themselves, ordered all the philosophers out of the city around the year 93 AD. Epictetus was on the road again. He settled in a small Greek town called Nicopolis and opened a school there. Students came from across the empire to hear him speak. He taught for the rest of his life, lived simply, owned almost nothing, never married, and, late in life, adopted a child whose parents had died. He died, they say, around the year 135 AD. He never wrote anything down. Everything we have from him comes from a student named Arrian, who took notes. What you are about to read is in two parts. Part I is the Handbook, which in Greek is called the Enchiridion. Arrian pulled it together from his notes as a short, portable summary of the teaching. Fifty-two chapters. Some are a single sentence. It was meant to be carried in a pocket and used. Part II is a set of eight longer lectures from the Discourses, also written down by Arrian. The Discourses are not a neat summary. They are Epictetus in the room with his students, pushing back, telling stories, answering questions. They show how the ideas lived when spoken out loud. Taken together, these two parts tell one story. The story is about a man who began his life owned by someone else and ended it more free than the emperors. He spent the years in between teaching anyone who would listen how the same freedom could be theirs. If you get one thing from this book, let it be this: the freedom Epictetus found did not come from his chains falling off. It came from somewhere deeper than any chain could reach. The question he leaves you with is whether you want to find that place in yourself, and whether you are willing to do the work to get there. Daimon Classics ------------------------------------------------------------ A Note on the Text ------------------------------------------------------------ Epictetus lived from about 55 to 135 AD. He taught in Greek, first in Rome and then in a small Greek town called Nicopolis. He never wrote down a single word of his teaching. Everything we have from him comes from one of his students, a man named Arrian, who took careful notes in the classroom and in private conversation. The two works that survive are the Enchiridion, or Handbook, and the longer Discourses. Both come to us through Arrian, and both stand as the closest thing we have to hearing Epictetus speak. This book is an adaptation, not a translation. That distinction matters. A translation renders the words of the original as closely as the target language allows. An adaptation keeps the arguments, the structure, and the core claims, but rewrites the language for a different kind of reader. This volume has two parts, and each part draws on a different source. Part I adapts Elizabeth Carter's 1758 English translation of the Enchiridion, first published in London. Carter was an English poet and classical scholar. Her rendering of Epictetus was the first complete English version of his surviving work. For more than a century it was the version every English reader met. It is careful, scholarly, and in the public domain. Part II adapts P. E. Matheson's 1916 English translation of the Discourses, published by the Clarendon Press at Oxford. Matheson's version has been praised from the start as a graceful and readable English. It is also in the public domain. Both of these translations are good. Both are also written in the long, winding sentences of the English of their day, which most young readers find slow going. That is the gap this edition is trying to close. Every argument Epictetus makes in Carter and in Matheson is in this adaptation. Every key claim is present. The order of the arguments is kept. Where the original uses difficult vocabulary, we have used plain everyday words. Where the original uses one long sentence with several clauses, we have broken it into two or three short sentences a student can read without stopping. What we have not done is add claims Epictetus did not make, or put feelings into his voice that the source does not support. Where extra context is needed, we have added it in italic editor's notes at the start and close of each chapter in Part I, and at the start of each lecture in Part II. Those italic notes are the editor's words. The plain text is an adaptation of Epictetus. Italic voice and plain voice never mix inside one paragraph, so you can always tell who is speaking. Readers who want the literal text should read Carter or Matheson directly. Carter's translation is freely available online at the Internet Classics Archive, classics.mit.edu. Matheson's translation is freely available at sacred-texts.com and on Wikisource. This edition is for everyone else. For the student who has never read philosophy. For the young person standing at the beginning of their life. For anyone who takes seriously the question of how to live. That was always who Epictetus was talking to. ------------------------------------------------------------ Rome and Nicopolis in the First Century AD ------------------------------------------------------------ To understand Epictetus, you need to know something about the world he lived in. The Rome of Epictetus's lifetime was the capital of an empire that stretched from Britain to Egypt. Emperors held almost total power. A good emperor could make life steady. A bad emperor could make it dangerous. In Epictetus's early years, the emperor was Nero, who was known for cruelty and who killed himself in 68 AD after losing the support of his own soldiers. Later came the Flavians, and then Domitian, whose reign turned sharp and suspicious near its end. It was a world in which a careful person learned to watch what he said. Slavery was woven all through Roman life. There were slaves in the fields, slaves in the workshops, and slaves in the homes of the rich. Many were taken in war. Some were born into it. Some worked in chains. Others served as tutors, secretaries, doctors, and household managers. A few, trusted by their owners, rose to positions of real power inside the emperor's own court. Epaphroditus, the man who owned Epictetus as a boy, was one of those. He had been a slave himself, had won his freedom, and had risen to become secretary to Nero. A household like his was full of well-educated slaves, many of whom were allowed to read, to study, and even to sit under teachers of philosophy. Philosophy itself was a risky business under the emperors. The Stoics, the school Epictetus belonged to, held that no one but the good person is truly free. Some emperors did not like the sound of that. Around 93 AD, Domitian ordered all philosophers out of the city of Rome. Epictetus was one of them. He went east and settled in Nicopolis, a Greek town founded a century earlier to mark a famous sea battle. It sat on the western edge of Greece, far enough from the capital to be left alone, close enough for students from across the empire to reach it. He opened a school there and taught for the rest of his life. That is the world of the Handbook. Keep it in mind as you read. ------------------------------------------------------------ Before You Begin ------------------------------------------------------------ This volume is a book by a very old teacher, written down by a student more than nineteen hundred years ago. The teacher's name was Epictetus. He spent part of his life as a slave and the rest as a free man. The book you are about to read came out of that life. The Handbook, which takes up Part I, has fifty-two short chapters. Some are a single sentence. None is more than two pages. It was meant to be carried. It was meant to be read in small pieces and practiced in between. Before you step into it, here are the five big ideas the book turns on. If you keep these in your head as you read, the fifty-two chapters will start to fit together like the pieces of one map. First, the dichotomy of control. That is a big phrase for a simple idea. Some things are up to you and some are not. Your body, your money, your reputation, other people's opinions of you, whether your team wins, whether you get the job, whether someone you love stays or dies, all of these are not up to you. What is up to you is what you do with your mind. How you think about things. What you choose. Who you become. Epictetus says most human misery comes from confusing these two lists. We chase what we cannot control and neglect what we can. He spent his life pointing people back to the right list. Second, role-playing in life. This is the idea that you did not cast yourself in the life you are living. You did not choose your family, your country, your body, the century you were born into, or the situations you keep finding yourself in. Those are the role you were given. What is yours is how you play the role. Epictetus uses the image of an actor in a play. You did not write the lines and you did not pick the part. Your job is to play the part well. When this idea sinks in, a lot of old arguments with the world go quiet. Third, response over reaction. Between something happening to you and you feeling a certain way about it, there is a small gap. In that gap is a judgment. A story you tell yourself about what the event means. Epictetus says people are not upset by things themselves. They are upset by the judgments they form about those things. That may sound too simple. It is not. If you can learn to catch the judgment before it hardens, you can learn to meet the same events other people meet without being pulled around by them. Fourth, character as your only true possession. Everything outside of you can be taken. Money can be lost. Bodies age and break. Friends move away. Even the people we love most can die. Character, though, the kind of person you actually are on the inside, cannot be taken from you by anyone else. Epictetus was once chained as a slave. He said, and he meant, that his owner could chain his leg, not his will. He wants you to see that the one part of you no one can touch is also the one part that matters most. Fifth, progress over performance. This book does not ask you to become perfect. It does not even ask you to be a student of philosophy. It asks you to make progress. Progress has a particular look to it, in Epictetus's world. The person making progress is quieter than the person who has just read a new book and wants to tell you about it. The person making progress is not trying to impress anyone. The person making progress blames no one, praises no one, boasts of nothing, and, when he fails, looks at himself first. You will see him, late in the book, drawn clearly in Chapter 48. Picture him now and hold him in mind as you read. Those are the five. Keep them close as you go. One more thing before you start. You may not agree with everything Epictetus says. You may want to argue. Good. He would have wanted you to. A student of his named Arrian took down these lectures because he saw how alive the conversation was when Epictetus taught. Reading the book is meant to feel like being in that room. Write in the margins. Close the book and think. Come back to it. That is how this kind of reading works. The book is small. The ideas in it are not. Begin. Daimon Classics ============================================================ PART I: THE HANDBOOK (ENCHIRIDION) ============================================================ The Handbook The Enchiridion The Enchiridion is the short book. It was not written by Epictetus himself. It was taken down from his lectures by his student Arrian, and it served as a pocket reference, something to be carried and read a little at a time. Its fifty-two chapters cover the whole program. Read them slowly. 1. Some Things Are Up to Us ------------------------------------------------------------ Epictetus opens with the one rule that holds the whole book together. Learn which things are up to you and which are not. Everything else follows from that. Some things are up to us, and some are not. In our power are our opinions, our wants, our choices to go after something or avoid it, and in a word, all our own actions. Not in our power are our body, our property, our reputation, our position, and in a word, anything that is not our own action. The things that are up to us are free by nature. No one can block them. The things that are not up to us are weak, and they belong to other people. Remember this. If you treat what belongs to others as your own, you will be blocked at every turn. You will grieve. You will feel upset. You will blame both gods and people. If instead you treat only what is yours as your own, and what belongs to others as theirs, no one will ever force you. No one will hold you back. You will never blame or accuse anyone. You will never be your own enemy, and no one will be able to harm you. You are aiming at great things. You cannot let yourself be pulled even a little toward the other things. You must drop some of them entirely. Others you must set aside for now. If you try to have calm and riches and honor and power all at once, you will fail at the outer things, and you will certainly fail at the inner ones. The inner ones are the only ones that bring real happiness and freedom. Train yourself to say to every harsh appearance: "You are only an appearance, not truly the thing you seem to be." Then test it by the rules you have learned. First and most important, test whether it touches something in your power or something that is not. If it is not in your power, have this ready to say: "It is nothing to me." What this means. Everything you meet is either up to you or it is not. Sort it before you react to it. That one question will save you half your troubles. 2. Aim Desire and Aversion Correctly ------------------------------------------------------------ Desire and aversion are the two forces that move us. Epictetus says the first skill of the student is to aim them correctly. Desire promises you will get what you want. Aversion promises you will avoid what you do not want. The person who fails to get what he wants is unhappy. The person who runs into what he tried to avoid is miserable. Limit your aversion to things that are in your own control. Do that, and you will never run into what you tried to avoid. Aim aversion at sickness, or death, or poverty, and you will be miserable. Take aversion away from everything not in your control. Turn it instead toward the things inside you that would go against your own nature. For now, set your desire down entirely. If you long for anything not in your control, you are sure to be disappointed. The things in your control that are worth wanting, you do not yet have hold of. Use only gentle versions of wanting and avoiding. Keep them light. Keep them open to correction. What this means. Train your wants and your fears. Point them only at what you can actually change. Everything else is a trap. 3. Name a Thing before You Love It ------------------------------------------------------------ Epictetus gives the practice that guards the heart. Name a thing honestly before you love it, and the loss of it will not destroy you. Whenever something pleases your mind, or serves a use, or is loved with deep affection, remind yourself of what it truly is. Start with the small things. If you are fond of a clay cup, remember that it is a clay cup you are fond of. Then, if it breaks, you will not be crushed. If you kiss your child, or your wife, remember that you are kissing a human being, someone who is subject to all the things that can happen to any of us. Then, if they die, you will grieve, but you will not be undone. What this means. Know what you love for what it really is. Seeing clearly does not make the love smaller. It makes the loss bearable. 4. Picture How It Tends to Go ------------------------------------------------------------ Before you begin anything, Epictetus says, picture how it actually tends to go. Expect the trouble that comes with the task, and the trouble will not throw you. When you are about to do any action, remind yourself what sort of action it really is. If you are going to the baths, picture what usually happens there. Some people splash water. Some push and crowd. Some speak roughly. Some steal. You will handle the trip better if you say to yourself: "I am going to bathe, and I will keep my mind steady, in line with nature." Do the same before any action. That way, if something goes wrong at the baths, you will have this ready to say: "It was not only the bath I wanted. I wanted to keep my mind steady. I will not keep it steady if I let what happens put me in a bad mood." What this means. Picture the mess before you step into it. Then you will meet the mess, and not lose yourself in it. 5. Change What You Blame ------------------------------------------------------------ This one sentence is the core of Stoic thought. Most of the book rests on it. Epictetus asks you to change what you blame. People are not upset by things themselves. They are upset by the ideas and judgments they form about those things. Death, for instance, is not terrible. If it were, it would have seemed terrible to Socrates. The terror lies in our idea that death is terrible. Whenever we are blocked, or upset, or grieved, we should never blame other people. We should look at our own judgments. The untrained person blames others for the bad state he is in. The person starting to learn blames himself. The person who has truly learned blames neither others nor himself. What this means. The event is one thing. Your story about the event is another. Change the story and you change what the event does to you. 6. Be Proud Only of What Is Yours ------------------------------------------------------------ Be proud only of what is yours. Nothing else will hold up. Epictetus shows it with a horse. Do not be proud of any excellence that is not your own. If a horse became proud and said, "I am handsome," that could be put up with. When you become proud and say, "I have a handsome horse," understand that you are proud of the good of the horse, not of your own. What then is truly yours? The right use of the impressions that come to your mind. When you use your impressions in a way that fits nature, you have reason to be proud. The good you are proud of is really your own. What this means. Be proud of what you choose, not of what you have. Pride in someone else's gifts is borrowed pride. It does not last. 7. Hold Loosely ------------------------------------------------------------ Life is the voyage, death is the captain's call, and every good thing in between is a small treasure found on the beach. Hold loosely. A ship is at anchor. You go ashore to fetch water. On the way, you can amuse yourself by picking up a shell or an onion. Your mind, though, should be turned toward the ship, always listening for the captain's call. If he calls, you must drop everything and run back, or you will be dragged aboard bound hand and foot like a sheep. Life is the same. Instead of an onion or a shell, life may hand you a wife, or a child. There is no harm in enjoying them. When the captain calls, though, leave it all and run to the ship. Look back at none of it. If you are old, do not wander far from the ship. When the call comes, you need to be able to reach it in time. What this means. Enjoy the good things that come your way. Do not grip them so tightly that you cannot let them go when the time comes. 8. Wish Things to Happen as They Do ------------------------------------------------------------ One of the most quoted teachings in all of Stoicism. Two short sentences that hold a whole way of life. Do not demand that things happen as you wish. Wish instead that they happen as they do happen, and you will go on well. What this means. Fit your wants to reality, not reality to your wants. Peace begins the moment you stop arguing with what is. 9. The Body Can Be Blocked, Not the Choice ------------------------------------------------------------ What can block your body cannot block your choice. Epictetus keeps sliding a wedge between the two. Sickness is a block to the body, not to your power of choice, unless your choice gives in to it. A limp is a block to the leg, not to your power of choice. Say this to yourself about everything that happens. You will find it to be a block to something else, but not to you. What this means. Your body can be hurt. Your choice can stay your own. Keep the two sorted out, and most events lose their grip on you. 10. You Already Have the Right Tool ------------------------------------------------------------ Whatever hits you, Epictetus says, you already have the right tool inside you. Turn and find it before you react. When anything happens, remember to turn toward yourself and ask what power you have for making right use of it. If you see a good-looking person, you will find that self-control is the power against this. If pain comes at you, you will find endurance. If you hear an insult, you will find patience. When you practice this, the impressions of things will not hurry you away with them. What this means. For every hard moment there is a strength inside you that fits it. Look in before you look out. 11. Retrain the Tongue ------------------------------------------------------------ A small change of words, a large change of heart. Epictetus retrains the tongue so the mind will follow. Never say of anything, "I have lost it." Say instead, "I have given it back." Is your child dead? The child was given back. Is your wife dead? She was given back. Has your property been taken away? That too was given back. "The man who took it is a bad man." What does it matter to you whose hand the giver uses to ask for it back? While the gift is yours to have, take care of it. Take care of it, though, as you would take care of something that is not yours, the way a traveler cares for his room at an inn. What this means. Everything you love was on loan. Change the words you use, and the loss stops feeling like a robbery. 12. Risk a Little Loss for a Great Gain ------------------------------------------------------------ Do not protect your progress by holding on to your old worries. Epictetus asks you to risk a little loss for a great gain. If you want to make progress, lay aside such thoughts as these: "If I ignore my business, I will have nothing to live on. If I do not correct my servant, he will be good for nothing." It is better to die of hunger, free from grief and fear, than to live in plenty with a troubled mind. It is better for your servant to be a poor one than for you to be unhappy. Start with small things. Is a little oil spilled? A little wine stolen? Say to yourself: "This is the price I pay for calm. Nothing worth having is gotten for nothing." When you call your servant, keep in mind that he may not come at your call, or, if he does, that he may not do what you want. He is not so important that he should have the power to upset you. What this means. A calm mind costs something. Pay the small costs on purpose, and the big ones will not knock you over. 13. Name the Trade You Are Making ------------------------------------------------------------ To grow in one direction, you have to accept losing ground in another. Epictetus names the trade. If you want to make progress, be willing to seem foolish and slow about outside things. Do not wish to be thought clever. Even if others take you for someone important, distrust yourself. You cannot easily keep your power of choice in line with nature while also keeping a firm grip on outside things. If you give care to the one, you will have to neglect the other. What this means. You cannot be deep inside and impressive outside at the same time. Pick the one that matters more. 14. Turn Your Wish the Right Way ------------------------------------------------------------ The wish to hold everything steady is an old human wish. Epictetus names it plainly, then turns your wish the right way. If you wish your children and your wife and your friends to live forever, you are foolish. You are wishing that what is not in your power should be in your power, and that what belongs to others should belong to you. In the same way, if you wish your servant to be without fault, you are a fool. You are wishing that wrongdoing should not be wrongdoing, but something else. If you wish to have your desires not disappointed, that is in your own power. Train yourself in what is in your power. The one who has power over any other person is the one who can grant or take away what that person wants. Whoever would be free, then, let him not wish for anything or turn away from anything that depends on others. If he does, he will have to be a slave. What this means. Wanting others to change so you can feel safe is a trap. Work only on what is yours, and you cannot be owned. 15. Life Is a Banquet ------------------------------------------------------------ Epictetus compares life to a banquet. Take your share. Do not grab. Do not beg. Remember that you should behave in life as you would at a banquet. Is a dish brought round to you? Put out your hand and take a fair share. Does it pass you by? Do not stop it. Has it not yet come? Do not stretch your desire out toward it. Wait until it reaches you. Do the same with children, with a wife, with public position, with wealth. In time you will be a worthy partner at the feasts of the gods. If you do not so much as reach for the things set before you, but are able even to look past them, then you will not only be a partner at the feasts of the gods, but share in their rule as well. This is how Diogenes and Heraclitus and others like them rightly came to be called divine. What this means. At any table, take what is handed to you and be glad. Do not grab. Do not sulk when nothing comes. That is how a whole life is eaten well. 16. Stay Clear Inside While Being Kind Outside ------------------------------------------------------------ Epictetus does not tell you to be cold. He tells you to stay clear inside while being kind outside. When you see someone weeping from grief, because his son has gone away, or has died, or because he has lost what he had, take care that the sight does not carry you off with it. Make the distinction in your own mind right away. Have this ready to say: "It is not the event itself that hurts this person. Another person can hear the same thing and not be hurt. It is the judgment he has formed about it that hurts him." As far as words go, do not refuse to bend toward him. If it helps, you can even groan along with him. Take care, though, not to groan on the inside too. What this means. Meet another person's sorrow with kind words and a soft face. Keep your own mind clear while you do. 17. Act Your Part Well ------------------------------------------------------------ Maybe the most famous image in the book. You did not write the play. You do not cast it. Your only work is to act your part well. Remember that you are an actor in a play, and the author decides what kind of play it is. If he wants it short, it is short. If he wants it long, it is long. If he gives you the part of a poor man, play it well. If he gives you a lame man, or a governor, or a private person, play that part well. Your work is to act well the character given to you. Choosing the character is someone else's work. What this means. Stop fighting the role you were given. Play it as well as you can. That is your one real job. 18. Turn Every Omen into Something Useful ------------------------------------------------------------ A raven croaks and the old world called it an omen of bad luck. Epictetus takes even that and turns it into something useful. When a raven happens to croak in an unlucky way, do not let the sound carry you off. Make the distinction in yourself right away. Say: "None of these signs is sent for me. At most, it might touch my poor body, or my property, or my reputation, or my children, or my wife. To me, though, all signs are lucky, if I choose. Whatever happens from any of them, it is in my power to get some good out of it." What this means. The world is full of signals. Most of them are not about you. The ones that are, you can still turn into something useful. 19. Enter Only Contests You Can Win ------------------------------------------------------------ You can be unbeatable if you only enter contests you can win. Epictetus says that is not a dodge. It is the one field that counts. You can be unbeatable, if you only enter contests you can win. When you see someone raised high in honors, or power, or great respect on any account, take care not to be carried off by the sight. Do not say he is happy. If the heart of what is good lies in the things in our own power, there is no room in you for envy or rivalry. For your part, do not wish to be a general, a senator, or a consul. Wish to be free. The only road to that is to look past the things that are not in our power. What this means. Pick your contests. The one contest you can always win is the contest for a good inner life. 20. Insult Is a Decision You Made ------------------------------------------------------------ The thing most people call being insulted is, on a closer look, a decision you made inside your own head. Epictetus asks you to catch it before it grows. Remember, it is not the person who gives rough words or a blow who does the offending. It is the idea in your mind that turns these things into offenses. When someone provokes you, be sure that it is your own opinion that has provoked you. First, try not to be carried off by the sight. Once you gain a little time and space, you will find it easier to command yourself. What this means. The gap between what happens and how you feel is where you live. Buy a few seconds in that gap and you stop being pulled around. 21. Keep the End in View ------------------------------------------------------------ Keep the end in view. Epictetus says it is not morbid. It is the cure for small thinking. Let death and exile, and everything that looks terrible, be daily before your eyes. Most of all, keep death there. You will never entertain a low thought, and you will never long for anything too eagerly. What this means. Remembering you will die is not gloomy. It puts everything else in its real size. 22. Stand Still While They Mock You ------------------------------------------------------------ If you take the life of the mind seriously, Epictetus says, you should expect some people to mock you. Stand still while they do. If you really want to take up philosophy, prepare yourself from the start to be laughed at, to be sneered at by the crowd, to hear them say, "He has come back to us a philosopher all at once," or, "Where did this lofty look come from?" For your part, do not put on a lofty look. Hold steadily to the things that seem best to you, as one placed by God in this station. Remember, if you stay with it, the very people who laughed at you first will later admire you. If you are beaten by them, though, you will earn their laughter twice. What this means. Taking ideas seriously can make you a target. Hold your ground quietly and the mockery will turn to respect. 23. Do Not Live to Please Others ------------------------------------------------------------ The wish to please outside people is a small hole through which a whole life can drain out. Epictetus plugs it. If you ever turn your attention to outside things in order to please someone, be sure that you have wrecked your plan of life. Be content in everything with being a student of philosophy. If you also wish to seem one in the eyes of others, seem one first to yourself. That will be enough. What this means. Work to be the real thing, not to look the part. The crowd will notice when the real thing shows up. 24. Will I Be Nobody ------------------------------------------------------------ The longest chapter so far. Epictetus answers the fears that come when you stop chasing status. Will I be nobody? Will my friends suffer? Will my country lose out? Do not let thoughts like these trouble you: "I will live in dishonor and be nobody anywhere." If dishonor is an evil, you cannot be pulled into evil by the action of another, any more than you can be pulled into anything shameful by another. Is it your business to hold power, or to be invited to a fine dinner? Not at all. How then can this be a real dishonor to you? How can it be true that you will be nobody anywhere, when you ought to be somebody only in the things that are in your own power, and in those things you may be of the greatest worth? "My friends will be without help." What do you mean by without help? They will not receive money from you. They will not be made Roman citizens by you. Who told you that these things are among the things in our own power, and not the work of others? Who can give to another what he does not have himself? "Earn them, then," someone says, "so we too can share." If I can earn them and still keep my own honor and my word and greatness of mind, show me the way, and I will earn them. If, though, you ask me to lose my own real good so you may gain what is not a real good, see how unfair and foolish your request is. Which would you rather have, a sum of money, or a friend of honor and good faith? Help me, then, to build that character in myself, rather than asking me to do the things by which I would lose it. "My country, as far as I can help it, will be without aid." Again, what help do you mean? "It will not have porches or baths built by you." So what? A blacksmith does not provide the city with shoes, and a shoemaker does not provide it with weapons. It is enough that each one fully does his own proper work. If you supply the city with one more citizen of honor and good faith, have you not helped it? Yes. You are not useless to your country, then. "What place, then," you ask, "should I hold in the state?" Whatever place you can hold while keeping your honor and your good faith. If, by wanting to be useful there, you lose these, of what use will you be to your country, once you have become a person without honor or shame? What this means. You owe your country and your friends your best self. That is the one thing you can actually give them. Lose yourself trying to buy their favor, and you give them nothing. 25. What Did You Pay for Your Rank ------------------------------------------------------------ Someone else was chosen over you. Epictetus turns the rank into arithmetic. What did you pay? What did they pay? Now the score is even. Is someone preferred above you at a dinner, in a greeting, in being asked for his advice? If these things are good, you ought to be glad that he got them. If they are evil, you should not grieve that you did not get them. Remember that you cannot expect an equal share of things not in our own power without using the same means that others use to get them. How can the person who does not show up at a great man's door, does not attend him, does not praise him, expect to have an equal share with the one who does? You are being unfair and greedy, then, if you are not willing to pay the price these things are sold for and still want them for nothing. How much is a head of lettuce sold for? A halfpenny, let's say. If someone pays his halfpenny and takes the lettuce, and you, not paying, walk off without it, do not think he has gained an advantage over you. He has the lettuce. You have the halfpenny you did not give away. So it is in this case. You were not invited to someone's dinner. You did not pay the price a dinner is sold for. It is sold for praise. It is sold for attendance. Pay the price if it is worth it to you. If you want the dinner without paying the one and receiving the other, you are both greedy and a fool. Do you, then, have nothing in place of the dinner? Yes, you do. You have the freedom of not praising the person you did not want to praise. You have the freedom of not putting up with his manner at the door. What this means. Every thing people get is paid for with something. If you did not pay, do not be sore you did not get it. That pay was yours to keep, or spend, as you chose. 26. Test Whether You Have Really Learned ------------------------------------------------------------ A small test for whether you have really learned. Compare how you take another person's loss to how you take your own. The will of nature can be learned from those things in which we do not differ from one another. When a neighbor's boy breaks a cup, we are quick to say, "These things will happen." Remember, then, that when your own cup breaks, you ought to feel the same way you felt when the other was broken. Carry this across into greater matters. Has someone else's child died, or wife? There is no one who will not say, "This is what happens to human beings." When someone's own child dies, though, the first word is, "Oh, how wretched am I." We should remember how we felt when we heard the very same thing about another. What this means. Use other people's losses as a mirror. If you can see them clearly there, you can learn to see your own that way too. 27. Evil Is Not a Thing in the World ------------------------------------------------------------ A quiet claim about how the world is built. A target is not set up so that an archer can miss it. In the same way, the nature of evil does not exist in the world. What this means. The world is built for things to go right, not wrong. Evil is not a thing in the world. It is a wrong turn inside a person. 28. Guard the Mind as You Guard the Body ------------------------------------------------------------ If you guard your body against strangers, Epictetus asks, why would you not guard your mind the same way? If a person had handed your body over to anyone he met in his way, you would surely be angry. Do you feel no shame, then, in handing over your own mind to be upset and thrown off course by anyone who happens to speak to you in an unpleasant way? What this means. Your mind is more yours than your body is. Do not let a rude stranger take the wheel of it. 29. Count the Cost Before You Begin ------------------------------------------------------------ Epictetus warns any beginner who has just fallen in love with philosophy. Count the cost first, or you will quit in shame. The athlete is his example. In every matter, consider what comes first and what comes after, and then undertake it. Otherwise, you will start off with spirit, careless of the cost, and when the cost begins to show, you will give up in shame. "I want to win at the Olympic Games." First consider what comes before and after, and then, if it is to your good, set to it. You must follow the training rules. You must eat what your trainer tells you to eat. You must refuse fancy foods. You must drill your body, whether you want to or not, at fixed hours, in heat and cold. You must drink no cold water, and sometimes no wine. In a word, you must give yourself up to your trainer as you would to a doctor. Then, in the contest itself, you might be thrown into a ditch. You might dislocate your arm. You might turn your ankle. You might swallow a great deal of dust. You might be whipped. After all of it, you might still lose. When you have counted up all this, if you still want the contest, go into it. Otherwise you will act like little children, who first play wrestlers, then gladiators, then trumpeters, then tragic actors, copying whatever they have just seen. You too, in the same way, will first be an athlete, then a gladiator, then a philosopher, then a public speaker, and nothing whole-heartedly. Like an ape, you will copy whatever you see. Each new thing pleases you until the newness wears off, and then it pleases you no more. You have never taken up a thing with careful thought, or studied the whole of it. You approach at random, and you approach coldly. In the same way, some people, after seeing a philosopher, or hearing a man like Euphrates speak, wish to be philosophers themselves. Before you do that, consider first what sort of thing the business is. Then look honestly at your own nature. Ask whether you can carry it. If you wish to be a wrestler, look at your arms, your thighs, your hips. Different people are made for different things. Do you think you can go on acting as you act now and at the same time be a philosopher? Do you think you can eat, drink, be angry, and be annoyed just as you are now? You must keep watch. You must labor. You must leave your own household. You must be looked down on by a slave boy, laughed at by those you meet, come off worse in everything, in honor, in office, in court, in every small affair. Weigh these things. If it still seems worth the price, then exchange what you must to get peace, freedom, and steadiness of mind. Otherwise, do not come near. Do not, like the children, be now a philosopher and then a tax collector and then a public speaker and then a steward of Caesar. These things do not fit together. You must be one person, either good or bad. You must build up either the part within you or the outside things. You must give your labor either to things inside or to things outside. You must take the place either of a philosopher or a common man. What this means. Before you commit to a hard road, look all the way down it. Only start what you are willing to finish. Half a life split four ways is worse than one small life lived whole. 30. Duties Fit the People in Your Life ------------------------------------------------------------ Your duties are not free-floating. They are fitted to the people in your life. Change the relationship and the duty changes with it. Duties are measured by relationships. Is someone your father? Then you owe him care, and yielding in all things, and patient hearing of his scoldings and his corrections. "He is a bad father," you say. Were you then linked by nature only to a good father? No. You were linked to a father. "My brother is unjust." Then keep your own position in relation to him. Do not look at what he does. Look at what you must do to keep your own power of choice in line with nature. Another person will not hurt you unless you choose to be hurt. You will be hurt when you decide you have been hurt. In this way, from the idea of a neighbor, a fellow citizen, a commanding officer, you will find the matching duty, if you train yourself to think about these relationships. What this means. Your job in any relationship starts with you, not with the other person. Keep your own side of it clean, whatever theirs looks like. 31. Get Your Thinking about the Gods Right ------------------------------------------------------------ Piety, for Epictetus, is not ceremony. It is getting your thinking about the gods right, and then living as if it were true. The heart of piety toward the gods is to form right opinions about them. Think of them as existing, and as governing the universe with goodness and justice. Set yourself to obey them, to yield to them, and to follow along willingly in all events, knowing they come from the most perfect understanding. This way, you will never find fault with the gods, or accuse them of not caring for you. This can be done only by pulling yourself away from the things not in our own power, and by placing good and evil only in the things that are. If you suppose any of the things not in your power to be either good or evil, when you miss what you wished, or fall into what you would avoid, you will have to blame and complain against whoever seems to be the cause. Every animal is by nature made to run from and to hate the things that look harmful, and their causes, and to chase and love the things that look helpful, and their causes. A person who thinks he has been harmed cannot rejoice in the one he believes harmed him, any more than he can rejoice in the harm itself. This is why a son curses his father when the father does not hand him the things the son thinks are good. The belief that kingship was a good made Polynices and Eteocles enemies. It is why the farmer, the sailor, the merchant, and the one who loses wives and children, all curse the gods. Where our interest is, there our piety follows. The one, then, who is careful to order his desire and his aversion as he should, is by the same means careful of piety. Still, it is right for every person to offer drink offerings and sacrifices and first fruits, in the customs of his country, with clean hands, and without sloppiness, without carelessness, without meanness, and without going beyond his means. What this means. How you think about what runs the world shapes how you meet every morning. Trust the order of things, and thanks will come easily. Fight it, and nothing will feel like enough. 32. How to Use an Oracle ------------------------------------------------------------ In Epictetus's world, people consulted oracles to learn what would happen. He allows the practice, but not as most people use it. When you turn to fortune-telling, remember that you do not know what the event will be. You come to learn it from the fortune-teller. The nature of the event, though, you already know, if you are a student of philosophy. If it is among the things not in our own power, it cannot be either good or evil. Do not, then, carry either desire or aversion with you to the fortune-teller. If you do, you will come trembling. First, know clearly that every event is neither good nor bad for you, whatever sort it may be. It will be in your power to make right use of it, and in this no one can block you. Then come with confidence to the gods as your counselors. Once the counsel has been given, remember what sort of counselors you have taken on, and whose advice you will be refusing if you disobey. Go to an oracle, as Socrates said, in cases whose whole weight turns on the outcome, and where there is no way to work out the answer by reason or by any other skill. When it is your duty to share the danger of a friend or your country, do not ask an oracle whether you should share it. Even if the fortune-teller warns you that the omens are bad, the bad omen means at most that death, or being maimed, or exile is in your future. You have reason within you, and reason tells you, even at these costs, to stand by your friend and your country. Pay attention, then, to the greater oracle, the Pythian god, who drove out of his temple the man who gave no help to his friend while another was killing him. What this means. Do not ask the future for permission to do what you already know is right. Some duties do not wait on signs. 33. How a Student Carries Himself in Public ------------------------------------------------------------ The longest set of practical rules in the book. Epictetus lays out how a student of philosophy should carry himself in public. Settle on a character and a way of acting for yourself right away, which you can keep both alone and in company. For the most part, be silent, or speak only what is needed, and in few words. You can, though sparingly, enter into conversation when the occasion calls for it. Do not enter it on any of the common subjects. Not on gladiators. Not on horse races. Not on athletic champions. Not on food and drink. These are the usual talk of the crowd. Above all, do not talk about people, either to blame them, or to praise them, or to compare them. If you can, steer the conversation around you toward better subjects. If you find yourself among strangers, be silent. Do not laugh much, nor on many occasions, nor loudly. Avoid swearing, if possible, altogether. If not, avoid it as much as you can. Avoid public and common entertainments. If some occasion pulls you to them, stay sharp, so you do not slide unnoticed into the manners of the crowd. However steady a person is on his own, if his companion has caught bad habits, he too will catch them. Provide for your body only what its simple use requires: food, drink, clothing, house, household. Cut off and refuse everything that has to do with show or softness. Before marriage, keep yourself as free as you can from physical familiarities. If you do not keep wholly free, keep within what is lawful. Do not be harsh and full of scoldings toward those who use these liberties, nor boast often that you yourself do not. If someone tells you that another person has spoken ill of you, do not make excuses about what was said. Answer: "He did not know my other faults. If he had, he would not have mentioned only these." You do not need to appear often at public shows. If there is ever a proper reason for you to be there, let it not be seen that you care more for one competitor than for yourself. Wish only that things should be just as they are, and that only the one who wins should win. This way you will meet no frustration. Keep wholly away from shouts and from mocking and from violent feelings. When you come away, do not talk at length about what happened, or about anything that does not help to improve you. Such talk would make it look as though you had been strongly moved by the show. Do not go, of your own accord, to readings or rehearsals by authors, and do not appear at them readily. If you do appear, keep your seriousness and your steadiness, and at the same time do not be gloomy. When you are about to talk with someone, especially with a person of higher station, picture to yourself how Socrates or Zeno would behave in such a case. You will not be at a loss to make right use of whatever happens. When you are about to go to people in power, picture to yourself that you will not find him at home, that you will not be allowed in, that the doors will not be opened to you, that he will take no notice of you. If, with all this in mind, it is still your duty to go, bear what happens. Never say to yourself, "It was not worth so much." That is the speech of the common man, of one thrown off by outside things. In conversations, avoid talking often and at length about your own actions and dangers. What you like to tell about the risks you have run is not as pleasant to others to hear. Avoid also the effort to stir up laughter. That is slippery ground, which can throw you into common manners, and it can also lower you in the respect of those who know you. It is also dangerous to come near to unclean talk. Whenever anything of that sort happens, if there is a proper opening, correct the one making such advances. At the very least, by silence and a blush and a discouraging look, show that you are displeased with such talk. What this means. How you carry yourself in public is practice for who you become in private. Keep the small habits clean and the big ones will follow. 34. Look at Both Sides of the Moment ------------------------------------------------------------ When pleasure promises itself, Epictetus says, buy yourself time. Look forward to both sides of the moment, the before and the after. If you are struck by the look of some promised pleasure, guard yourself against being carried off by it. Let the matter wait on your own timing. Give yourself a delay. Then bring two moments to your mind at once. First, the time when you will enjoy the pleasure. Second, the time afterward, when you will regret it and blame yourself. Set against both of these how you will rejoice and approve of yourself if you hold back. Even if it seems a fitting pleasure, take care that its inviting and friendly and pulling force does not get you. Set against it the satisfaction of knowing you won a great victory over yourself. What this means. Before you grab at a pleasure, wait one minute. In that minute, ask yourself how you will feel an hour after you took it. 35. Do the Right Thing in the Open ------------------------------------------------------------ A short, firm rule about acting in the open. When you do anything from a clear judgment that it ought to be done, never avoid being seen to do it, even if the world should form a wrong opinion about it. If you are not acting rightly, avoid the action itself. If you are acting rightly, why are you afraid of those who will blame you wrongly? What this means. Do the right thing where people can see you. If the act is good, their opinion is not your problem. 36. Remember the Person Hosting You ------------------------------------------------------------ An example from logic, and then a quiet rule about how to sit at a table. "Either it is day or it is night" is a proper statement for one kind of logical argument but not for another. In the same way, at a feast, taking the largest share may suit the body's appetite, but it is entirely against the social spirit of a banquet. When you eat with another, then, remember not only the value of the food set before you, for the body, but also the value of the conduct that is owed to the person who is hosting you. What this means. Good manners at the table are not a show. They are a small daily practice in remembering other people. 37. Do Not Reach Past What You Can Do Well ------------------------------------------------------------ One sentence, two losses. If you have taken on a role beyond your strength, you have both made a poor showing in that role and given up one you could have played well. What this means. Do not reach past what you can do well. The stretch costs you twice: the try, and the role you gave up to try. 38. Guard What Is Most Worth Guarding ------------------------------------------------------------ Epictetus names the thing most worth guarding, and asks you to guard it with the same care you give your foot. As, in walking, you take care not to step on a nail or turn your foot, so, in the same way, take care not to hurt the ruling part of your mind. If we guarded against this in every action, we would take up each action with greater safety. What this means. You watch where you put your feet. Watch where you put your mind with the same care. 39. The Shoe Fits the Foot ------------------------------------------------------------ A single image. The body is a measure. The shoe fits the foot. Go beyond that fit, and nothing stops you. The body is the measure of the things that suit it, as the foot is the measure of the shoe. If you stop there, you will keep the measure. If you move beyond it, you must be carried forward, as down a cliff. In the case of a shoe, once you pass its fit to the foot, it comes to be covered with gold, then dyed purple, then studded with jewels. Once a thing has passed a proper measure, there is no end. What this means. Enough is a size. Once you step past enough, there is no size that stops you. Know your size. 40. A Person Is Valued for Character ------------------------------------------------------------ Epictetus writes in a world very different from ours. Read the heart of what he says: a person is valued for character, not for the look they can give. Women from the age of fourteen are flattered by men with a title that treats them as objects of pleasure. Seeing that they are looked at this way, they turn to dressing up and place all their hopes there. It is worth our while, then, to help them see that they are respected for something deeper: an honest, careful, and steady character. What this means. The trap is to place all your worth in the look you can give others. A steady character is a deeper thing to be known by. 41. Tend the Body Briefly ------------------------------------------------------------ Tend the body, but briefly. Epictetus wants most of your care going somewhere else. It is a sign of small talent to spend much time on things that have to do with the body, such as long exercise, eating, drinking, and the other animal functions. These should be done in passing, and lightly. Give your whole care to the mind. What this means. A fit body is good. A fit mind is the point. Do not mistake the warm-up for the work. 42. The Person Who Wrongs You Is Mistaken ------------------------------------------------------------ The person who wrongs you, Epictetus says, is mistaken, not evil. This is one of the hardest thoughts in the book. When someone treats you badly, or speaks badly of you, remember that he acts or speaks from a belief that it is his duty. He cannot follow what seems right to you. He follows what seems right to him. If he is going by a wrong idea of the situation, he is the one who has been hurt, because he is the one who has been fooled. If someone supposes a true statement to be false, the statement is not hurt. The person who is fooled about it is hurt. If you set out from these points, you will bear quietly with the person who speaks against you. You will say on every such occasion: "It seemed so to him." What this means. The person who hurts you usually thinks he is doing the right thing. That does not make him right. It does take the edge off your anger. 43. Everything Has Two Handles ------------------------------------------------------------ A simple picture. Everything in life has two handles. One will let you carry it. The other will not. Everything has two handles, one by which it can be carried, and one by which it cannot. If your brother treats you unjustly, do not take hold of the action by the handle of his injustice, because that handle will not carry it. Take hold of it by the opposite handle, that he is your brother, that he was brought up with you. This way, you will have hold of it in a way you can carry. What this means. Every hard situation can be picked up in more than one way. Find the handle that lets you carry it without being crushed. 44. You Are Not the Things You Have ------------------------------------------------------------ Epictetus takes apart a common boast. You are not the things you have. These lines do not connect: "I am richer than you, therefore I am better." "I am a better speaker than you, therefore I am better." The real connection is this: "I am richer than you, therefore my property is greater than yours." "I am a better speaker than you, therefore my speech is better than yours." You yourself, after all, are neither property nor speech. What this means. The things you own and the skills you have are not the same as who you are. Do not mistake a bigger shadow for a bigger person. 45. Get the Whole Picture First ------------------------------------------------------------ Before you judge a person's act, make sure you have the whole picture. Does someone bathe in a very short time? Do not say he bathes badly, only that he bathes in a short time. Does someone drink a great deal of wine? Do not say he drinks badly, only that he drinks a great deal. If you do not fully understand the reason behind what he is doing, how can you know he is doing badly? This way, you will not risk agreeing to any impressions except the ones you fully understand. What this means. What looks like a bad act may have a reason you do not see. Hold your judgment until you do. 46. Do Not Wear the Name, Do the Work ------------------------------------------------------------ Do not wear the name. Do the work. Epictetus has no patience for the person who talks philosophy instead of living it. Never call yourself a philosopher. Do not talk loudly about theories among those who have not studied. Act in a way that fits the theories. At a dinner, do not speak about how people ought to eat. Eat as you ought. Remember that in this way Socrates kept himself from all show. When people came to him and asked him to recommend them to other philosophers, he took them and recommended them, so well did he bear being passed over. If, among those who have not studied, some talk should come up about ideas of philosophy, be silent for the most part. There is great danger in spitting out what you have not yet digested. If someone tells you that you know nothing, and you are not stung by it, know that you have begun your work. Sheep do not spit up grass to show the shepherds how much they have eaten. They digest their food inwardly, and outwardly they produce wool and milk. In the same way, do not show off theories to those who have not studied them. Show the actions that grow out of them after you have digested them. What this means. The proof is in what you do, not what you say about what you know. Live the idea. That will speak for it louder than words could. 47. Simplicity Is Not a Boast ------------------------------------------------------------ Simplicity is not a boast. If it becomes one, it was never simplicity. When you have trained yourself to supply the needs of your body at a small price, do not pride yourself on it. If you drink water, do not say on every occasion, "I drink water." First, consider how much more sparing and patient with hardship the poor are than we are. If at some time you want to harden yourself by training to labor, and to bearing hard trials, do it for your own sake, and not for the world. Do not grab cold statues to show off. When you are very thirsty, take a little cold water into your mouth, and spit it out, and tell nobody. What this means. If you eat simply, simply eat. Do not turn your self-discipline into a new kind of showing off. 48. The Portrait of Real Progress ------------------------------------------------------------ Epictetus draws the portrait of a person who is making real progress. None of it is loud. The mark of a common person is this: he never looks for benefit or for harm from himself, only from outside things. The mark of a student of philosophy is this: he looks for all harm and all benefit from himself. The signs of one who is making progress: He blames no one, praises no one, accuses no one. He says nothing about himself, as if he were somebody, or as if he knew anything. When he is in any way blocked or held back, he blames himself. If he is praised, he laughs quietly at the person praising him. If he is blamed, he makes no defense. He moves with the care of people recovering from sickness, afraid to disturb anything that has been set right, before it is fully healed. He puts down all desire in himself. He turns his aversion only toward those things that go against the proper use of our own power of choice. The push of his active energy toward anything is very gentle. If he seems stupid or ignorant, he does not care. In a word, he watches himself as an enemy, as one lying in wait. What this means. The person making real progress does not announce it. He is busy repairing the inside. Let that be you. 49. Live the Philosophy, Do Not Just Explain It ------------------------------------------------------------ Do not be impressed by a person who only explains the works of others. The point is to live. When someone shows off his ability to understand and interpret the works of Chrysippus, say to yourself: "If Chrysippus had not written obscurely, this person would have had nothing to be vain about. What do I want? To understand nature and follow her. I ask, then, who interprets nature. Finding that Chrysippus does, I go to him. I do not understand his writings. I seek someone to interpret them for me." In this there is nothing to pride myself on. When I have found an interpreter, what remains is to use the instruction. That alone is the valuable thing. If I only admire the interpretation itself, what am I, apart from a grammarian instead of a student of philosophy? Except that, instead of Homer, I am interpreting Chrysippus. When someone, then, asks me to read Chrysippus to him, I blush, when I cannot show actions that match and keep company with the teaching. What this means. Do not collect wise words. Live a few of them. That is the only reading that counts. 50. No More Later, Start Now ------------------------------------------------------------ Near the end of the book, Epictetus stops being gentle. No more waiting. No more later. Start being the person you have been talking about becoming. Whatever rules you have carefully set for yourself to live by, hold to them as laws. Live as though you would commit an offense by breaking any one of them. Do not mind what anyone says about you. That, after all, is no concern of yours. How long, then, will you put off thinking yourself worthy of the best growth, and worthy of never breaking the rules of reason? You have received the lessons of philosophy you should be at home with, and you have been at home with them. What other master, then, are you waiting for, to throw on him the delay of your reform? You are no longer a boy. You are a grown man. If you go on being careless and slow, and always add delay to delay, resolve to resolve, and set one more day after another on which you will turn your attention to yourself, then, without noticing, you will go on without real progress. You will live and you will die as one of the crowd. From this moment, then, think yourself worthy of living as a grown person, as one making progress. Let whatever seems best to you be an unbreakable law. If any instance of pain or pleasure, of glory or disgrace, comes before you, remember: Now is the contest. Now the Olympic Games have begun. There can be no putting off. One defeat, one yielding, and progress is lost or kept. Socrates became what he was by holding to nothing but reason, improving himself by everything that came. Though you are not yet a Socrates, you should live as one who wants to become one. What this means. Stop waiting for the right moment. This one is it. The person you wanted to be starts, or does not start, today. 51. Most of Your Care Is in the Wrong Place ------------------------------------------------------------ Epictetus steps back and names a trap students of philosophy keep falling into. Most of their care is in the wrong place. The first and most necessary part of philosophy is the use of the lessons themselves. For example: we ought not to lie. The second is the part of proofs. For example: why is it that we ought not to lie? The third is the part that gives strength and clearness to the first two. For example: why is this a proof? What is a proof? What follows from what? What is contradiction? What is truth? What is falsehood? The third part is needed for the sake of the second, and the second for the sake of the first. The first part is the one most needed, and the one we ought to rest on. We act the other way around. We spend all our time on the third part. We put all our care into it. We leave the first part alone. So, at the very moment we are lying, we are quick to show how it can be proved that lying is wrong. What this means. Do the right thing first. Explain later if you must. Most of us reverse the order. 52. Three Prayers to Keep Close ------------------------------------------------------------ The Enchiridion ends not with an argument but with three short prayers, kept close at all times. Epictetus hands you the last tools and closes the handbook. Keep these sayings ready on every occasion: > Lead me on, O Zeus, and you, O Destiny, > wherever your decrees have fixed my place. > I follow cheerfully. Were I unwilling, > wretched and wicked, I would follow still. (attributed to Cleanthes) > Whoever rightly yields to Fate is counted wise among us, and knows the laws of heaven. (attributed to Euripides) > Crito, if it pleases the gods, let it be so. Anytus and Meletus can kill me, but they cannot hurt me. (spoken by Socrates) What this means. When the wind is high, you will not have time to build an argument. You will have time only for a line you already know by heart. Learn a few. Keep them close. ============================================================ PART II: SELECTED DISCOURSES ============================================================ The Teachings Selected Discourses The Discourses are the longer record. In them, you see Epictetus in the room with his students, answering questions, pushing back, telling stories. Eight lectures are gathered here, chosen as a way in. A full reading of the Discourses waits for another day, when you are ready for it. I.1. On What Is Ours and What Is Not ------------------------------------------------------------ If the Enchiridion is Epictetus in shorthand, the Discourses are Epictetus thinking out loud. This first lecture returns to the same ground as Chapter 1 of the Handbook and walks it in detail. The examples are sharper. The people named are real. The stakes are life and death. None of our powers can judge itself. The power of grammar can tell one expression from another, but not whether we should write at all. The power of music can tell one tune from another, but not whether it is time to play. What can judge itself and everything else? Reason. Reason alone, of all the powers we have received, is made to understand its own nature: what it is and what it can do. It is made to understand the other powers as well. What else tells us that gold is a good thing? The gold does not tell us. It is the power that deals with impressions. The gods, then, have put into our hands the one blessing that is best of all, the one blessing that is master of all: the power to deal rightly with impressions. Everything else they did not put in our hands. Did they not wish to? I think that if they could have given us the other powers, they would have. They were not able. We are prisoners on earth, in an earthly body, among earthly companions. How could we have escaped being blocked in those things by these outward chains? Zeus himself says: "Epictetus, if it had been possible, I would have made your body, and your property, and those small things you prize, free and unhindered. As things are, do not forget that this body is not yours. It is clay, cleverly mixed. Since I could not make it free, I gave you a portion of our own divinity. I gave you the power of impulse to act and not to act, of will to get and will to avoid, in a word, the power to put impressions to right use. If you give your heart to this and put your affairs into its keeping, you will never be blocked or held back. You will not groan. You will blame no one. You will flatter no one." Does all this seem a small thing? Heaven forbid. If you are content with it, you are on the right road. As things are, though we have the power to give our heart to one thing and work for it alone, instead we give it to many. We tie ourselves fast to many things: to body and property, to brother and friend, to child and slave. Tied fast to so many things, we are weighed down by them and dragged along. The weather turns bad, and we sit and worry, and we keep asking, "What wind is blowing?" "The north wind." What does that have to do with you? "When will the west wind blow?" When it chooses, friend. When Aeolus chooses. God made Aeolus the master of the winds, not you. What follows? We must make the best of what is in our power and take the rest as nature gives it. By "nature" I mean God's will. "So am I to be beheaded now, and only me?" Why? Would you have had everyone beheaded, to keep you company? Won't you stretch out your neck the way Lateranus did in Rome when Nero ordered his beheading? He stretched out his neck and took the blow. When the blow was weak, he drew himself up a little and stretched his neck out again. Earlier, when Nero's freedman Epaphroditus came to him and asked the cause of his offense, he answered, "If I want to say anything, I will say it to your master." What, then, must a person have ready to help him in such times? Just this: he must ask himself, "What is mine and what is not mine? What can I do and what can I not do?" I must die. Must I die groaning? I must be imprisoned. Must I whine as well? I must be sent into exile. Can anyone stop me from going with a smile, with courage, with peace inside? "Tell the secret." I refuse to tell. That is in my power. "I will chain you." What are you saying, friend? Chain me? My leg, yes. My will, no. Not even Zeus can conquer my will. "I will lock you up." My poor body, you mean. "I will behead you." Why? When did I ever tell you that mine was the only head in the world that could not be cut off? These are the thoughts those who love philosophy should turn over. These are the lessons they should write down day by day. These are the exercises they should practice. Thrasea used to say, "I would rather be killed today than exiled tomorrow." What did Rufus say to him? "If you are choosing it as the harder thing, what is the meaning of that foolish choice? If as the easier thing, who has given you the easier? Will you not practice being content with what is given?" It was in this spirit that Agrippinus used to say, "I will not stand in my own way." Word was brought him, "Your trial is on in the Senate." "Good luck to it. The fifth hour is come." That was the hour when he used to take his exercise and his cold bath. "Let us go and exercise." When he had exercised, they came and told him, "You are condemned." "Exile or death?" he asked. "Exile." "My property?" "Not taken." "Well then," he said, "let us go to Aricia and dine." This is the result of training done right: the will to get and the will to avoid, so disciplined that nothing can block them or throw them off. I must die, must I? If now, then I am dying. If soon, I dine now, since it is time for dinner. Afterward, when the time comes, I will die. How will I die? As one who gives back what is not his own. I.2. On Keeping Your Character in Any Situation ------------------------------------------------------------ This lecture answers a question most of us never pose out loud. At what price am I willing to sell myself? Epictetus argues that every person, whether they notice or not, has already set the price. The only question is whether the price is low or high. For a reasoning creature, the only thing past bearing is what goes against reason. What is in line with reason can always be borne. Blows are not unbearable in themselves. What do I mean? Let me explain. The Spartans bear flogging, because they have learned that it is in line with reason. Is it not unbearable to hang oneself? When a person comes to feel that it is reasonable, though, he goes and hangs himself at once. If we look carefully, we will see that nothing troubles a reasoning creature like the unreasonable, and nothing draws him like the reasonable. The reasonable and the unreasonable, though, mean different things to different people. Good and evil, and useful and useless, differ from person to person too. That is the chief reason we need education, so we can learn to adjust our first ideas of reasonable and unreasonable to particular situations, and so be in harmony with nature. In deciding what is reasonable and unreasonable, we not only weigh the value of outside things. Each of us also considers what is in keeping with his own character. One man thinks it reasonable to do the lowest service for another. He looks only at this: if he refuses, he will be beaten and get no food, and if he does it, no harm will come to him. To another, it seems unbearable not only to do this service himself, but even to watch another do it. If you ask me, "Should I do it or not?" I will tell you: getting food is worth more than going without it, and being flogged is worth less than escaping it. So, if you measure your affairs by this standard, go and do it. "That makes me false to myself." That is for you to weigh, not me. You are the one who knows yourself. You know how high you set your own worth, and at what price you are willing to sell yourself. People sell at different prices. That is why Agrippinus, when Florus was wondering whether to go down to Nero's shows and perform in them himself, said to him, "Go down." When Florus asked, "Why do you not go down yourself?" Agrippinus answered, "Because I do not even consider the question." Once a person lowers himself to think about such matters, weighing outside things and calculating about them, he has almost forgotten his own character. What are you asking me? "Death or life?" I say life. "Pain or pleasure?" I say pleasure. "If I do not act in the play, I will be beheaded." Go then, and act your play. I will not. "Why?" Because you count yourself as an ordinary thread in the tunic. What follows from that? You think you ought to be like other men, just as one thread does not wish to be special among the rest. I want to be the purple, the touch of brilliance that gives distinction and beauty to the rest. Why do you tell me, "Be like the many"? If I am like them, I am no longer the purple. Priscus Helvidius saw this and acted on it. When Vespasian sent word telling him not to come into the Senate, he answered, "You can forbid me to be a senator. As long as I am a senator, I must come in." "Come in then, but be silent." "Do not question me, and I will be silent." "I am bound to question you." "I am bound to say what seems right to me." "If you say it, I will kill you." "When did I ever tell you I was immortal? You will do your part, and I will do mine. It is yours to kill, mine to die without flinching. It is yours to banish, mine to go into exile without groaning." What good, you ask, did Priscus do, being only one man? What good does the purple do to the garment? This much: being purple, it gives distinction and stands out as a fine example to the rest. A certain athlete showed this same spirit. He was threatened with death if he did not submit to a cutting that would leave him unable to father children. When his brother, who was a student of philosophy, came and said to him, "Brother, what will you do? Are we to let the knife do its work and still go back to the gymnasium?" he would not agree. He bore his death instead. Someone asked, "How did he do so, as an athlete or as a student of philosophy?" He did so as a man. As a man who had wrestled at Olympia and been called victor, one who had spent his days in such a place. Another man would have let even his head be cut off, if he could have lived without it. That is what I mean by keeping your character. That is the power of character in those who have made a habit of carrying it into every question that comes up. "Go to, Epictetus, have yourself shaved." If I am a student of philosophy, I say, "I will not be shaved." "Then I must behead you." Behead me, if it is better for you so. Someone asked, "How can each of us discover what suits his character?" When the lion comes near and the bull steps out alone to protect the herd, how does he find out what powers he has? Plainly, the awareness comes with the power. In the same way, anyone who has a power of this kind will know it. Like the bull, the man of noble nature does not become noble all of a sudden. He must train through the winter, and prepare, and not lightly leap to meet things that do not concern him. One thing, friend. See the price at which you sell your will. If you do nothing else, do not sell your will cheap. "The great, heroic style belongs to others, to men like Socrates." If this is our true nature, why do not all men show it, or many? Do all horses turn out swift? Are all dogs good at the scent? "I have no natural gifts. Am I to make no effort for that reason?" Heaven forbid. Epictetus will not be better than Socrates. If only I am not worse, I am content. I will never be a Milo, but I do not neglect my body. I will never be a Croesus, but I do not neglect my property. We do not give up our effort in any field because we expect not to come first. I.4. On What Progress Actually Looks Like ------------------------------------------------------------ Everyone wants to make progress. Most people look for it in the wrong place, Epictetus argues, and so never find it. This lecture names the one place progress can be seen. How shall we describe progress? It is the state of the person who has learned from the wise that we will to get what is good and will to avoid what is evil. He has also learned that peace and calm come to us only when we do not fail to get what we will, and do not fall into what we will to avoid. Such a person has put away the will to get anything entirely, and set it aside for the future. He wills to avoid only the things that depend on his will. If he tries to avoid anything beyond his will, he knows that, for all his avoidance, he will one day come to grief and be unhappy. If the promise of good character is happiness and peace and calm, then progress toward good character is progress toward each of these. Wherever the perfection of a thing leads, the approach to it is progress. How is it, then, that though we admit this is the nature of good character, we look for progress somewhere else, and we show off progress somewhere else? What does good character produce? Peace of mind. Who, then, makes progress? Is it the person who has read many of the writings of Chrysippus? Can this be good character, to have understood Chrysippus? If so, we must admit that progress is nothing more than understanding a lot of sayings from Chrysippus. The fact is, we admit that good character tends toward one result, but then declare that progress, the approach to good character, tends toward another. "That fellow," someone says, "can already read Chrysippus by himself." Well done, by the gods, you are making progress, fellow. Progress indeed. Why do you mock him? Why do you draw him away from a sense of his own shortcomings? Won't you show him what good character really means, so that he can learn where to look for progress? Poor man, there is only one place to look for it: where your work lies. Where does it lie? It lies in the region of the will, so you do not fail to get what you wish, and do not fall into what you wish to avoid. It lies in avoiding error in the region of impulse, the impulse to act and the impulse not to act. It lies in agreement and the refusing of agreement, so that in these you cannot be fooled. The first of these is first in order and most needed. If you merely tremble and mourn and try to escape hardship, no progress is possible. Show me your progress, then, in this field. You act as though, when I was talking to an athlete and said, "Show me your shoulders," he answered, "Look at my leaping-weights." Your leaping-weights are your concern. I want to see the final result of your training. "Take the book on 'Impulse' and learn how I have read it." Slave, that is not what I am looking for. I want to know what impulses you have, for action and against action. I want to know what you will to get and what you will to avoid. I want to know how you plan and prepare, whether in harmony with nature or out of it. Show me that you are acting in harmony with nature, and I will tell you that you are making progress. Act out of harmony with nature, and I tell you to go and write books on such matters, not merely explain them. What good will they do you? Don't you know the whole book is worth five pence? Do you think, then, that the man who explains it is worth more? Never look for your work in one place and your progress in another. Where, then, is progress? If any one of you, setting aside outside things, has brought his mind to bear on his own will, to develop it fully and bring it into perfect harmony with nature, so it is high and free, unhindered, untroubled, trustworthy, self-respecting; if he has learned that the one who tries to get or avoid what is not in his power cannot be trustworthy or free, but has to change as those things change, tossed like the winds, and has to make himself a servant to others, who can give or take away such things; and if, when he rises in the morning, he guards and keeps these principles, washes as one who is trustworthy, eats as one who is self-respecting, and on each occasion works to meet his main tasks, the way the runner makes running his one aim and the voice-trainer his training; he is the man who is indeed on the path of progress, who has not traveled for nothing. If all his effort is turned to the study of books, if he spends his labor on this, and has gone abroad for this, then I tell him to go straight home and not neglect what he finds there. He has gone abroad for nothing. His true work is to train himself to remove mourning and lamentation from his life, the "ah me" and "alas for my misery," the talk of "bad fortune" and "misfortune," and to learn what death is, what exile is, what prison is, what the cup of hemlock is. This is so he can say in prison, "My dear Crito, if it pleases the gods, so be it," and not say, "Miserable old man that I am, is it for this I kept my grey hairs?" Whose words are they? Do you think I will name a mean man of no reputation for you? Are they not the words of Priam, and of Oedipus? Are they not the words of all kings? What else are tragedies but the sufferings of men who have set their admiration on outside things, shaped into verse? What, then, does Chrysippus offer us? "That you may know," he says, "that these truths from which calm and peace of mind come to us are not false, take my books, and you will find that what gives me peace of mind is true and in harmony with nature." What great good fortune. What a great benefactor, who shows us the way. Even though all men have raised temples and altars to Triptolemus for teaching us how to grow crops, which of you has ever set up an altar in honor of the man who found the truth and brought it to light and published it among all people? Not the truth of mere living, but the truth that leads to right living. Who ever dedicated a shrine or an image for this gift, or worships God for it? I ask, shall we, who offer sacrifices because the gods gave us wheat or the vine, never give thanks to God that they produced this kind of fruit in the mind of a human being, through which they meant to show us the true way of happiness? I.12. On Contentment ------------------------------------------------------------ Epictetus pushes further than the Enchiridion usually does. Contentment is not a mood. It is a relationship with how the world is arranged. This lecture asks the big question: can you accept the universe as it is, and, if so, how? A note for the reader: Epictetus sometimes calls his student "slave" in these lectures. He himself was born a slave. He uses the word to shock the student out of self-pity, not to demean. There are several views about the gods. Some say the divine does not exist. Some say it exists but is inactive, uncaring, and takes no thought for anything. Some say God exists and does think, but only about great things and things in the heavens, not about anything on earth. A fourth class says God thinks about earthly and human things, but only in a general way, and has no care for individuals. There is a fifth class, including Odysseus and Socrates, who say, "Wherever I move, you see me." Before anything else, then, we have to examine each of these views, to see whether it is true or not. If there are no gods, how can following the gods be the end of human life? If there are gods but they care for nothing, then what good is it to follow them? If there are gods and they do care, but there is no communication between them and people, or, more importantly, between them and me, then following them cannot be a true end either. The good person, having examined all these questions, has submitted his mind to the one who orders the universe, as good citizens submit to the law of the city. Anyone being educated should approach education with this purpose in mind: "How can I follow the gods in everything? How can I be content with the divine rule? How can I become free?" The free person is the one for whom everything happens according to his will, and whom no one can block. "Is freedom, then, the same as madness?" Heaven forbid. Frenzy and freedom have nothing in common. "I want everything to happen as I think good, whatever that may be." Then you are in a state of madness. You are out of your mind. Don't you know that freedom is a noble thing, and worthy of respect? Merely wanting your chance thoughts to come true is not a noble thing. It comes dangerously close to being the most shameful of all things. How do we act in matters of writing? Do I want to write the name Dion however I want? No. I am taught the right way of writing it. How is it in music? Just the same. So it is in every field of art or science. Otherwise, there would be no point in knowing anything, if everything shaped itself to each person's whim. Should we say, then, that in this field alone, the greatest and most weighty of all, the field of freedom, I am allowed to follow chance wishes? Not at all. Education is exactly this: learning to shape one's will to match events. How do events happen? They happen as the one who arranges events has ordained them. He ordained summer and winter, fruitful seasons and barren ones, goodness and wrongdoing and all such opposites, for the sake of the harmony of the universe. He gave each of us a body, bodily parts, property, and people to be among. Remembering, then, that things are arranged like this, we ought to approach education, not to change the conditions of life, since that is not given to us, and would not be good for us, but so that, with our circumstances being what they are and what nature makes them, we can shape our mind to events. I ask you, is it possible to avoid people? How could we? Can we change their nature by our company? Who gives us that power? What is left for us, then? What way do we have to deal with them? We must act in a way that leaves them to do what seems good to them, while we stay in line with nature. You, though, are impatient and discontent. If you are alone, you call it a wilderness, and if you are with others, you describe them as plotters and robbers. You find fault even with your own parents and children and brothers and neighbors. When you are alone, you ought to call it peace and freedom, and count yourself equal to the gods. When you are in a large company, you should not call it a crowd or a mob or a nuisance. You should call it a high day and a festival, and accept all things in a spirit of content. What punishment is there, you ask, for those who do not accept things in this spirit? Their punishment is to be as they are. Is one discontent with being alone? Let him be deserted. Is one discontent with his parents? Let him be a bad son, and mourn his lot. Is one discontent with his children? Let him be a bad father. "Cast him into prison." What do you mean by prison? He is in prison already. A person's prison is the place he is in against his will. In the same way, Socrates was not in prison, since he chose to be there. "So am I to have a lame leg?" Slave, do you mean to put the universe on trial for one poor leg? Won't you make a gift of it to the whole? Won't you resign it? Won't you joyfully give it up to the one who gave it? Will you be angry and discontent with the orders of Zeus, laid down and ordained by him with the Fates who were present at your birth and spun the thread of your life? Don't you know what a small part you are compared to the universe? I mean this about your body. In reason, you are not beneath the gods, nor less than they are. The greatness of reason is judged not by length or height, but by its judgments. Will you not, then, set your good in the region where you are equal to the gods? "Alas, look what a father and mother I have been given." Why? Did you get to choose, before entering life, and say, "Let such a one marry such a one at this hour, so I can be born"? You were given no such choice. Your parents had to exist first. Your birth had to follow. Of what parents? Of the ones they were. Well, then, since your parents are what they are, is no resource left to you? Surely, if you did not know what your power of sight is for, you would be unhappy and miserable when you shut your eyes as colors were brought near you. Aren't you even more wretched and unhappy for not knowing that you have a high and noble spirit to face each occasion as it arises? The objects that match the power you have are brought near you, and you turn that power away at the very moment you ought to keep it open-eyed and alert. Rather, give thanks to the gods that they set you above the things they put out of your power, and that they made you answerable only for what is within your control. They left you without responsibility for your parents. The same is true of brothers, body, property, death, life. For what, then, did they make you answerable? For the only thing in your power, the right handling of your impressions. Why, then, do you insist on dragging in things you are not answerable for? That only makes trouble for you. I.18. On Not Being Angry at People Who Do Wrong ------------------------------------------------------------ A hard lecture for most of us to hear. Epictetus says that the thief is not a villain but a person who has lost sight of what is really valuable. Chapter 42 of the Enchiridion stated this rule briefly. Here he walks it all the way in. If what the wise say is true, that in everyone action starts from one source, feeling, then agreement is the feeling that a thing is so. Denial is the feeling that it is not so, yes, by Zeus. The withholding of judgment is the feeling that it is uncertain. In the same way, the impulse toward a thing starts from the feeling that it is fitting, and the will to get a thing starts from the feeling that it is useful for us. We cannot judge one thing useful and will to get another, or judge one thing fitting and be moved toward another. If all this is true, why are we angry at the crowd? "They are thieves and robbers," someone says. What do you mean by thieves and robbers? "They have gone astray and do not know what is good and what is evil." Ought we, then, to be angry with them or to pity them? Show them their error, and you will see how quickly they stop their wrongdoing. If their eyes are not opened, they treat nothing as higher than their own judgment. "What then? Ought not this robber and this adulterer be put to death?" Rather than say so, say this: "Shouldn't I destroy this man who is in error and delusion about the greatest matters, a man blinded not just in the sight that tells white from black, but in the judgment that tells good from evil?" If you put it this way, you will see how inhuman your words are. It is like saying, "Shouldn't I kill this blind man, or this deaf one?" If the greatest harm that can happen to a person is to lose what is greatest, and a right will is the greatest thing in every person, isn't it enough for him to lose this, without your anger on top of it? Friend, if you have to hold some harsh feeling at another's misfortune, pity him rather than hate him. Give up this spirit of offense and hatred. Do not use these phrases that the backbiting crowd uses, "these cursed and pestilent fools." Very well. How did you suddenly turn into a wise man? What an angry temper you have. Why, then, are we angry? Because we admire the material things that they rob us of. Only cease to admire your clothes, and you are not angry with the one who steals them. Cease to admire your wife's beauty, and you cease to be angry with the adulterer. Know that the thief and the adulterer have no place among the things that are your own, only among things that belong to another and are beyond your power. If you let them alone and count them as nothing, you have no one to be angry with anymore. As long as you admire these things, you must be angry with yourself rather than with them. Look, you have fine clothes, your neighbor has none. You have a window, and you want to air them. He does not know what the true good of a human being is, but thinks, like you, that the good is to have fine clothes. Isn't he, then, going to come and carry them off? If you show a cake to greedy people, and gobble it down all by yourself, do you expect them not to snatch at it? Do not provoke them. Do not have a window. Do not air your clothes. Yesterday I had an iron lamp beside my household gods. I heard a noise and rushed to the window. I found the lamp had been carried off. I reasoned with myself that the man who took it yielded to some plausible feeling. What do I conclude? Tomorrow, I say, you will find one of earthenware. The truth is, a person loses only what he has. "I have lost my cloak." Yes, because you had one. "I have a headache." Do you have a horn-ache too? Why, then, are you upset? Your losses and your pains have to do only with what you possess. "The tyrant will chain me." Yes, your leg. "He will cut off." What? Your neck. What will he fail to bind or cut off? Your will. That is why the men of old said, "Know yourself." What follows? You ought to practice in small things, and go on from them to greater things. "I have a headache." Then do not say, "Ah me." "I have an earache." Do not say, "Ah me." I do not mean you cannot groan. I mean, do not groan in spirit. If the boy brings you your leg-bands slowly, do not cry out and pull a long face and say, "Everyone hates me." Who wouldn't hate such a person? Have confidence in these thoughts for the future, and walk upright and free, not leaning on bulk of body like an athlete. You do not need to be undefeated by brute force, like a donkey. Who, then, is the person who cannot be conquered? The one whom nothing beyond his will can dismay. So I go on watching him in each set of circumstances, as if he were an athlete. He has won the first round. What will he do in the second? What if there is a hot sun, and the struggle is at Olympia? So it is in life. If you offer a man a bit of silver, he will scorn it. What will happen if you offer him a young woman? What if you do it in the dark? What happens if you press him with reputation, or abuse, or praise, or death? All these he can conquer. What will he do if he is wrestling in the hot sun, I mean, if he has drunk too much? What if he is in a frenzy, or in sleep? The person who can overcome in all these circumstances is what I mean by the athlete who cannot be beaten. II.1. On Courage and Caution ------------------------------------------------------------ This lecture is the most demanding in the volume. Epictetus argues that confidence and caution are not opposites. They are partners, as long as each is pointed at the right kind of thing. Be confident about what you cannot control. Be careful about what you can. The opening is abstract. Stay with it. The lecture turns to fear, death, and pain, and ends with one of the most stirring passages in the whole Discourses. It may seem a contradiction when the wise say that in everything we do, confidence can be combined with caution. We must do our best to consider whether it is true. In one sense, caution seems to be the opposite of confidence, and opposites cannot live together. What looks like a contradiction here, though, comes from a mix-up. If we were truly calling on a person to use caution and confidence about the same things, they could fairly blame us for joining qualities that cannot be joined. There is nothing strange in the statement. If it is true, as has often been said and shown, that the true nature of good and of evil depends on how we deal with impressions, and if things outside the will's control cannot be called good or bad, then it is not a paradox that the wise say: "Be confident in all that lies beyond the will's control, be cautious in all that is dependent on the will." If evil depends on evil choice, then caution is only right in matters of the will. If things outside the will's control, which do not depend on us, do not really concern us, we should use confidence about those. In that way we will be at once cautious and confident. We will be confident because of our caution. Because we are cautious about things that are really evil, we will gain confidence to face things that are not. As things stand, we behave like deer. Roman hunters scared deer toward waiting nets by stringing colored feathers on ropes the deer would not cross. When the deer fear the feathers and fly from them, where do they turn? Where do they take refuge for safety? They turn to the nets, and so they die, because they confuse the object of fear with the object of confidence. So it is with us. Where do we show fear? About things outside our will's control. When do we behave with confidence, as though there were nothing to fear? In matters within the will's control. If we are only successful in things beyond our will's control, we think it does not matter to us if we are fooled, or act rashly, or do a shameless deed, or hold a shameful desire. Where death or exile or pain or disgrace faces us, we show the spirit of retreat and wild alarm. So, as you would expect from people mistaken about the greatest matters, we turn our natural confidence into something bold, desperate, reckless, shameless, and we change our natural caution and modesty into a cowardly and low quality, full of fears and anxieties. If a person moves his caution to the region of the will and the works of the will, he will find that, along with the wish to be cautious, the will to avoid lies in his control. If he turns his caution toward what is beyond the control of our will, then, since his will to avoid will be pointed at what depends on others, he will be subject to fear, unsteadiness, and anxiety. What is fearful is not death or pain. It is the fear of pain or death. That is why people praise the one who said, "Not death, but shameful death, is to be feared." We ought, then, to turn our confidence toward death, and our caution toward the fear of death. What we really do is just the opposite. We run from death, but we pay no attention to forming judgments about it. We are reckless and careless. Socrates called such fears bogies, and rightly so. Just as masks seem fearful and terrible to children, from lack of experience, we are affected by events for much the same reason children are affected by bogies. What makes a child? Lack of knowledge. What makes a child? Lack of instruction. As far as a child knows those things, he is no worse off than we are. What is death? A bogy. Turn it around and see what it is. You will see that it does not bite. The stuff of the body was bound to be parted from the fire element, either now or later, since it existed apart from it before. Why, then, are you upset if they are parted now? If not parted now, they will be later. Why? So the turning of the universe can be completed. It needs things present, things future, and things past and done. What is pain? A bogy. Turn it around and see what it is. The poor flesh is subject to rough movement, then again to smooth. If it does not benefit you, the door stands open. If it does, bear it. In every event, the door must stand open, and then we have no trouble. What, then, is the fruit of these judgments? A fruit that must be the most noble and the most fitting for those who are truly being educated: a mind that is calm and fearless and free. On these matters, you must not trust the crowd, who say, "Only the free may be educated." Trust rather the wise, who say, "Only the educated are free." "What do you mean by that?" I mean this. What else is freedom but the power to live our life as we want? "True." Tell me, friends, do you wish to live doing wrong? "We do not." Then no one who does wrong is free? "No one." Do you wish to live in fear, in pain, in distress of mind? "By no means." Well, no one who suffers fear or pain or distress of mind is free. Whoever is rid of fears and pains and distresses is rid of slavery by the same road. How, then, shall we go on believing you, dearest lawgivers, when you say that none but the free may be educated? The wise say that we do not allow anyone to be free except those whose education is complete. That is, God does not allow it. So I say many times over. What you must practice and have at your command is to know what you ought to approach with confidence and what with caution. All that is beyond the control of the will, approach with confidence. What is dependent on the will, approach with caution. "Haven't I been reciting to you?" says my student. "Don't you know what I'm doing?" What are you busy with? Small phrases. Away with your small phrases. Show me how you stand when it comes to the will to get and the will to avoid. Show me that you do not fail to get what you will, or fall into what you will to avoid. As for those small phrases, if you have any sense, you will take them away somewhere and be done with them. "What do you mean? Didn't Socrates write?" Yes, who wrote as much as he did? Under what conditions, though? He could not always have someone at hand examining his judgments or being examined by him in turn. So he examined and questioned himself. He was always putting some first notion on trial in a practical way. That is what a student of wisdom writes. Small phrases he leaves to others, to the foolish, or to the blessed, those whose peace of mind gives them leisure for study. Today, when the crisis calls you, will you go off and display your recitation, and harp on, "How cleverly I compose dialogues"? Friend, make this your object: "Look how I do not fail to get what I will. Look how I escape what I will to avoid. Let death come and you will see. Bring me pains, prison, dishonor, condemnation." This is the true field of display for a young person come from school. Leave those other small things to other people. Let no one ever hear you say a word about them. Do not accept any compliments on them. Carry yourself as if you were no one, and knew nothing. Show that you know this one thing: how not to fail, and how not to fall. Let others practice lawsuits, logical puzzles, and arguments. Let your study be how to bear death, bondage, the rack, and exile. Do all this with confidence and trust in the one who has called you to face them, and has judged you worthy of the place you hold. At your appointed post, you will show what reason, the ruling part of the mind, can do when set against forces that lie outside the will. If you do this, that paradox will no longer seem impossible or strange. The paradox is that we must show caution and confidence at the same time, confidence about things beyond the will, caution in things that depend on the will. II.5. On Handling Difficulty ------------------------------------------------------------ Using a game of dice and a game of ball, Epictetus teaches you to play hard without confusing the score with who you are. This may be the most practical picture of the careful life in the whole book. Material things are neither good nor bad, but how we handle them is not neutral. How, then, can a person keep the steady and calm mind, and with it the careful spirit that is not random or hasty? You can do it if you copy those who play dice. Counters and dice are neither good nor bad. How do I know what is going to turn up? My business is to use what does turn up with care and skill. In the same way, this is the main business of life: draw distinctions between things, weigh them one against the other, and say: "Outward things are not in my power. My will is my own. Where do I look for what is good and what is evil? Within me, among my own possessions." You must never use the word good or evil, or benefit or injury, or any such word, about things that belong to other people. "Do you mean, then, that outward things should be used without care?" Not at all. That too would be an evil for the will, and would go against its nature. They must be used with care, because their use is not neutral. At the same time, they must be used with steadiness and calm, because in themselves they are neither good nor bad. Where the true value of things is concerned, no one can block me or force me. I am subject to blocking and force only in matters that are not in my power to win, matters that are neither good nor bad in themselves, but can be dealt with well or badly, and that rests with me. It is hard to join these qualities: the care of a man who gives himself to material things, and the steadiness of one who pays them no mind. Hard, but not impossible. Otherwise, it would be impossible to be happy. We act very much as if we were on a voyage. What can I do? I can choose the helmsman, the sailors, the day, the moment. Then a storm arises. So what? My task is done. Now the helmsman has to act. Say the ship goes down. What can I do then? I do only what lies in my power. If I must drown, I drown. No panic. No shouting at the sky. I know anything born must also die. I am not immortal. I am a man, a part of the universe, the way an hour is part of the day. Like an hour, I have to be here. Like an hour, I have to pass. What does it matter to me, then, how I pass, by drowning or by fever, since I have to pass somehow? You will see that those who play ball with skill behave in this way. None of them argues whether the ball is good or bad, only how to strike it and how to receive it. The balance of play comes from this. Skill, speed, good judgment come from this: while I cannot catch the ball, even if I spread my garment for it, the expert catches it when I throw it. If we catch or strike the ball with hurry or fear, what good is the game? How will anyone stay in it and see how it works out? One will say, "Strike." Another will say, "Do not strike." Another will say, "You have had one stroke." That is fighting instead of playing. In that sense, Socrates knew how to play the game. What do I mean? He knew how to play in the court. "Tell me, Anytus," he said, "in what way you say that I disbelieve in God. What do you think divinities are? Are they not either children of the gods, or the mixed offspring of gods and men?" When Anytus agreed, he said, "Who, then, do you think can believe in the existence of mules and not in asses?" He was like someone playing at ball. What ball did he play with? Life, imprisonment, exile, taking poison, losing his wife, leaving his children without a father. These were the things he played with. Nonetheless, he played and tossed the ball with balance. So we ought to play the game, so to speak, with all possible care and skill, and still treat the ball itself as neither good nor bad. A person must certainly grow in skill when it comes to some outward things. He need not value a thing for its own sake, but he should show his skill in handling it, whatever it is. The weaver does not make fleeces. He works with them in whatever form he gets them. Your food and your property are given to you by another, who can also take them from you, yes, and your little body as well. It is up to you, then, to take what is given and make the most of it. If you come off without harm, others who meet you will rejoice with you at your safety. The one who has a good eye for conduct, if he sees that you behaved with honor, will praise you and rejoice with you. If he sees a man who has saved his life by acting without honor, he will do the opposite. Where a person can rejoice with reason, his neighbor can rejoice with him also. How is it, then, that some outward things are called natural and some unnatural? It is because we look at ourselves as cut off from the rest of the universe. For the foot, I will say it is natural to be clean. If you take it as a foot and not as a separated thing, it will be fitting for it to walk in the mud, and to tread upon thorns, and sometimes to be cut off for the sake of the whole body. Otherwise it will cease to be a foot. We must hold exactly the same kind of view about ourselves. What are you? A man. If you look at yourself as a separate being, it is natural for you to live to old age, to be rich, to be healthy. If you look at yourself as a man and a part of a larger whole, that whole makes it fitting that at one moment you fall ill, at another go on a voyage and risk your life, at another are at your wit's end, and may even die before your time. Why, then, are you indignant? Don't you know that, just as the foot we spoke of, if looked at by itself, will cease to be a foot, so you will cease to be a man? What is a man? Part of a city. First, part of the city where gods and men are joined as one. Second, part of the city that has the next claim to that name, which is a small copy of the universal one. "What," you say, "am I now to be put on my trial?" Is someone else, then, to have a fever? Someone else to go on a voyage? Someone else to die? Someone else to be condemned? I say events of this sort have to happen, in a body like ours, in this enveloping space, in this common life, one to this man and another to that. Your business, then, is to take what fate brings, and deal with what happens, as is fitting. Suppose, then, the judge says, "I will judge you to be a wrongdoer." You reply, "May it go well with you. I did my part. It is for you to see if you have done yours. The judge's part too, do not forget, has its own danger." II.16. On the Gap Between Knowing and Doing ------------------------------------------------------------ The last Discourse in this volume is the one Epictetus could have begun with. You know all of this, he says. So why do you not live it? This lecture closes the loop on everything the Enchiridion has taught. Where does the good lie? In a person's will. Where does evil lie? In the will. Where is the neutral region? In what lies outside the will's control. Well then, does any one of us remember these principles outside the lecture-room? Does any person practice by himself, answering facts the way he would answer questions? For instance, is it day? "Yes." Is it night? "No." Are the stars even in number? "I cannot say." When money is shown to you, have you practiced giving the proper answer: that it is not a good thing? Have you trained yourself in answers like this, or only to meet tricky arguments? Why are you surprised, then, that you do well in the area where you have practiced, and make no progress where you have not? Why does the public speaker, though he knows he has written a good speech, has memorized what he has written, and brings a pleasant voice to his task, still feel anxious in spite of all this? The reason is that merely giving his speech does not satisfy him. What does he want? To be praised by his audience. He has been trained to give the speech. He has not been trained when it comes to praise and blame. When did he hear from anyone what praise is and what blame is, what the nature of each is, what kind of praise must be sought, and what kind of blame must be avoided? When did he go through this training? Why, then, are you still surprised that he is better than others in what he has been taught, and on a level with the common crowd in what he has not studied? He is like the singer with the lyre, who knows how to play, sings well, and wears a fine tunic, but still trembles when he comes on stage. Though he has all this knowledge, he does not know what the crowd is, or its shouts or mockery. He does not even know what this anxiety is that he is feeling: whether it depends on himself or on another, whether it can be quieted or not. So, if people praise him, he leaves the stage puffed up. If they mock him, his poor bubble of pride is pricked and sinks. Very much the same is our position. What do we admire? Outside things. What are we anxious about? Outside things. Still, we are at a loss to understand how fears or anxiety get hold of us. What else can possibly happen, when we count coming events as evils? We cannot be free from fear. We cannot be free from anxiety. Still, we say, "O Lord God, how can I be rid of anxiety?" Fool, have you no hands? Didn't God make them for you? Sit still and pray, then, that your nose won't run. Wipe your nose, rather, and don't accuse God. What do I draw from this? Hasn't God given you anything for the region of conduct? Hasn't he given you endurance, greatness of mind, courage? When you have these strong hands to help you, do you still look for someone to wipe your nose? We do not practice this conduct, nor pay attention to it. Find me one person who cares how he is going to do a thing, who is interested not in getting something, but in living up to his true nature. Who is there, when walking, who is interested in the walking itself, or when thinking a matter through, is interested in the act of thinking, and not in getting what he is planning for? Then, if he succeeds, he is lifted up and says, "What a fine plan that was of ours. Didn't I tell you, brother, that if we have thought a thing out it is bound to happen?" If he fails, he is low and miserable, and cannot find anything to say about what has happened. Which of us ever called in a prophet to help him live up to his true nature? Which of us ever slept in a temple of dreams for that? Name the person. Give me just one, so I can set eyes on the one I have long been looking for, the one who is truly noble and of fine feeling. Young or old, give me one. Why, then, do we wonder any longer that, while we are quite at home in dealing with material things, when we come to show ourselves in action we behave badly and poorly? Why do we wonder that we are worthless, cowardly, unable to endure, failures all around? If we kept our fear not for death or exile, but for fear itself, then we would practice to avoid what we think evil. As it is, we are smooth and fluent in the lecture-room. If any small question comes up about a point of conduct, we are able to follow the subject through by logic. Put us to the practical test, though, and you will find we are miserable shipwrecks. Let one distracting thought occur to us, and you will soon find out what we were studying and training for. The result of our lack of practice is that we are always heaping up terrors, and imagining things bigger than they really are. When I go on a voyage, as soon as I look down into the deep, or look around on the sea and see no land, I am beside myself, imagining that if I am wrecked I must swallow all this sea. It never occurs to me that three quarts are enough. What is it that alarms me? The sea? No. My judgment about it. When an earthquake happens, I imagine the city is going to fall on me. Is not a tiny stone enough to knock my brains out? What, then, are the burdens that weigh on us and drive us out of our minds? What else but our judgments? When a man goes away and leaves the friends and the places and the company he is used to, what else is it that weighs on him but judgment? Children, when they cry a little because their nurse has left them, forget her as soon as they are given a bit of cake. "Do you want us to be like children too?" Not at all. I would have you influenced not by cake, but by true judgments. What do I mean? I mean the judgments that a person must study all day, uninfluenced by anything that does not concern him, whether it is a friend, or a place, or a gymnasium, or even his own body. He must remember the law, and keep it before his eyes. What is the law of God? To guard what is your own, not to claim what is another's. To use what is given to you, not to long for anything if it is not given. If anything is taken away, to give it up at once and without a struggle, with thanks for the time you enjoyed it. Otherwise, you will cry for your nurse and your mother. What difference does it make what a person is a slave to, or what he depends on? How are you any better than one who weeps for a mistress, if you break your heart for a small gymnasium, and small colonnades, and favorite young men, and that sort of pastime? Here comes a man complaining that he can't drink the water of Dirce anymore. Isn't the Marcian water as good as that of Dirce? "I was used to the other." Yes, and you will get used to this one in turn. If such things are going to move you that much, go away and cry for it, and try to write a line like that of Euripides, "The baths of Nero and the Marcian spring." See how tragedy arises when fools have to face everyday events. "When shall I see Athens again, and the Acropolis?" Unhappy man, aren't you content with what you see day by day? Can you set eyes on anything better or greater than the sun, the moon, the stars, the whole earth, the ocean? If you really understand the one who governs the universe, and if you carry him about within you, do you still long for a handful of stones and a pretty rock? What will you do, then, when you are going to leave the very sun and moon? Will you sit crying like little children? What were you doing, then, at school? What did you hear? What did you learn? Why did you write yourself down a student of wisdom, when you might have written the truth, saying: "I did a few introductions, and read a few sayings of Chrysippus. I never entered the door of a true student of wisdom. What share have I in the calling of Socrates, who lived and died so nobly, or of Diogenes?" Can you imagine either of them weeping, or indignant, because he is not going to see this man or that, or be in Athens or in Corinth, but in Susa, as it happens, or Ecbatana? Does the one who can leave the banquet whenever he wants and play no longer upset himself while he stays on? Doesn't he stay at play just as long as it pleases him? Do you suppose the person I describe would endure endless exile, or a sentence of death? Won't you be weaned at last, as children are? Won't you take more solid food, and stop crying for nurse and mother, cries meant for old women's ears? "I will distress them," you say, "by leaving." You will distress them? No, you won't distress them. What distresses them, and you, is judgment. What can you do, then? Get rid of your judgment. Theirs, if they do well, they will get rid of themselves. Otherwise, they will sorrow for it, and have only themselves to thank. Man, be bold at last, even to the point of daring, as the saying goes, so you can have peace and freedom and a lofty mind. Lift up your neck at last, as one released from slavery. Have courage to look up to God and say: "Deal with me hereafter as you will. I am one with you. I am yours. I flinch from nothing so long as you think it good. Lead me where you will, put what clothes on me you will. Would you have me hold office, or stay out of it? Stay or go? Be poor or rich? For all this I will speak well of you before other people. I will show each thing in its true nature, as it is." Stay, rather, in the cow's belly and wait for your mother's milk to fill you. What would have become of Heracles, if he had stayed at home? He would have been Eurystheus, not Heracles. Tell me, how many friends and companions did he have, as he went about the world? No nearer friend than God. That is why he was believed to be the son of Zeus, and was so. Obedient to him, Heracles went about the world, clearing it of wrong and lawlessness. Do you say you are no Heracles, and cannot rid others of their evils? You are not even a Theseus, to clear Attica of ills? Clear your own heart. Cast out of your mind, not Procrustes and Sciron, but pain, fear, desire, envy, ill will, greed, cowardice, passion uncontrolled. These things you cannot cast out unless you look to God alone, set your thoughts on him alone, and give yourself to his commands. If you wish for anything else, then with groaning and sorrow you will follow what is stronger than you, always seeking peace outside yourself, and never able to be at peace. You are looking for it where it is not, and refusing to look where it is. ------------------------------------------------------------ Know Your Daimon: Reflection Prompts ------------------------------------------------------------ These questions are for you. Not for a grade, not for a test. Just for thinking. Take one. Sit with it. There are no right answers. 1. Epictetus says some things are up to us and some are not. Make a list of three things that have been bothering you lately. For each one, ask honestly: is this actually up to me? What changes if you apply his rule to it? 2. Epictetus was born a slave and became one of the most respected philosophers in history. He believed his freedom was always inside him, regardless of his chains. What chains do you carry that are actually inside you, not outside? 3. Chapter 5 says: do not be proud of anything that is not your own. What are you proud of that does not actually belong to you? What are you proud of that genuinely does? 4. Epictetus says everything has two handles: one you can carry it by and one you cannot. Think of a difficult situation in your life right now. What is the handle you have been using? What is the other handle? 5. Discourse II.16 says that understanding a principle and acting on it are completely different things. Pick one idea from this book that you understood but have not acted on. What would acting on it look like tomorrow? 6. Epictetus says that when people do wrong, they do it because they think it is right for them. They are mistaken, not trying to hurt you. Think of someone who has hurt you. Does thinking of them as mistaken rather than cruel on purpose change anything for you? 7. Chapter 21 says: keep death in mind every day. Not to be depressing, but so you never take anything for granted and never want anything too desperately. What would today look like if you kept that in mind? 8. The Enchiridion ends with three questions to ask before every action: Is this up to me? What does my role require? What will I think of this later? Take a decision you are facing right now and put it through those three questions. What do you find? 9. Chapter 11 says: never say "I have lost it," say "I have returned it." Think of something or someone you have lost. What changes if you reframe that loss as a return? 10. Epictetus says the price of peace of mind is not being upset by things that are not up to you. What have you been upset about recently that was not actually up to you? What would it cost to let it go? 11. Chapter 17 says you are an actor in a play and someone else chose the role. Your only job is to play the role well. What role were you given that you did not choose? How well are you playing it? 12. Chapter 43 says everything has two handles, one you can carry it by and one you cannot. Pick one conflict you are in right now. What is the handle that makes it carryable? 13. Discourse I.18 says people who do wrong are mistaken, not cruel on purpose. Is there someone in your life you have been treating as cruel when they might just be mistaken? What does that change? 14. Epictetus was born a slave and said his freedom was always inside him. What external thing have you been telling yourself you need before you can really be free? Is that true? 15. Chapter 46 says: do not call yourself a philosopher. Act like one. In what part of your life are you most tempted to talk about what you believe instead of living it? 16. One final practice, drawn from Epictetus's broader teaching. Keep these three questions ready in any moment of strong impulse. First: is this something up to me or not up to me? If it is not up to me, say to yourself: this is nothing to me. Second: what does my role require here? Not what my desire requires. My role. Third: what would I think of this later? Not in the moment of wanting it, but after. If you practice these three questions, they will become second nature. You will find yourself catching impulses before they carry you away. The goal is not to suppress your feelings. It is to stop your feelings from making your decisions for you. *Write. Talk about these with someone you trust. Come back to them in a year.* ------------------------------------------------------------ Glossary ------------------------------------------------------------ Key terms from this volume, plainly defined. Arete The Greek word for goodness of character, or excellence. For Epictetus, arete is not about following rules. It is about being the best version of what a human being is. It is developed through practice, not achieved through knowledge alone. Arrian The student of Epictetus who recorded his lectures and compiled them into the Discourses and the Enchiridion. Without Arrian, we would have nothing of Epictetus' teaching. Daimon Your inner voice, the truest part of who you are. Epictetus called it the will or the part of the mind that rules. It is the part of you that chooses, judges, and responds. It is the only part that is fully yours. Discourses The longer collection of Epictetus' lectures recorded by Arrian. Where the Enchiridion gives you the summary, the Discourses give you the reasoning behind it and the answers to the most common objections. Enchiridion The Greek word for handbook or manual. The Enchiridion of Epictetus is a short collection of his most important principles, compiled by Arrian for easy reference. The word suggests something you carry with you and use. Epaphroditus The owner of Epictetus. A freedman who served as secretary to the Emperor Nero. His treatment of Epictetus, including reportedly causing him physical harm, became part of the legend surrounding Epictetus' response to suffering. Hegemonikon The part of the mind that rules in Stoic philosophy. The part of the mind that judges, chooses, and responds. This is what Epictetus means when he says some things are up to us. He means: this part is up to us. Impression (Phantasia) The raw mental image or feeling that arises when something happens to you. Epictetus teaches that you cannot control your impressions, but you can control how you respond to them. The pause between impression and response is where freedom lives. Preferred Indifferents The Stoic term for things that are neither good nor bad in themselves but that we naturally prefer: health over illness, wealth over poverty, friendship over loneliness. The Stoic can want these things without requiring them for a good life. Prokope The Greek word for progress. In Stoicism, prokope means advancement in philosophy, specifically the growing ability to apply principles in real life rather than just understand them theoretically. Stoicism The school of philosophy founded in Athens around 300 BC by Zeno of Citium. The name comes from the stoa, a covered walkway where Zeno taught. The core Stoic idea: good character is the only true good, everything else is neither good nor bad, and freedom comes from mastering your own judgments and responses. Will (Prohairesis) The capacity for rational choice. Epictetus uses this word more than any other. It refers to the part of you that decides: your character, your purpose, your response. It is the seat of freedom. No one can touch your prohairesis without your permission. Musonius Rufus The Stoic philosopher who taught Epictetus while Epictetus was still a slave. Famous for the saying that you should never say "I lost" something, only "I returned" it. His own teaching survives mostly through fragments. Nicopolis The city in northwestern Greece where Epictetus opened his school after being expelled from Rome by Emperor Domitian. Students came from across the Roman Empire to study with him there. Hierapolis Epictetus' birthplace, a city in what is now Turkiye. He was born a slave and taken to Rome as a young man. Marcus Aurelius The Roman Emperor from 161 to 180 AD, and one of the most important figures in Stoic history. He read Epictetus obsessively and quoted him often in his own private writings, the Meditations (which appear as Volume 5 of this series). Zeno of Citium The founder of Stoicism, born around 334 BC. He began teaching in a covered walkway in Athens called the stoa, which gave the school its name. None of his writings survive, but his students and their students built the tradition that eventually reached Epictetus three centuries later. Paradox (Stoic) A position that sounds contradictory or unreasonable until you understand it. Epictetus teaches several: a slave can be freer than his master, losing something can be easier than owning it, the person who has nothing can want nothing more. ------------------------------------------------------------ What Is Daimon Classics? ------------------------------------------------------------ The ancient Greeks had a word: daimon. It means the voice inside you that knows who you really are. Not the voice that tells you what other people want. The one underneath that. The true one. Socrates believed every person had a daimon. He believed the whole point of life was to listen to it. Most of us do not. Life gets loud. There is always something to do, somewhere to be, something to want. People are constantly telling you who you should become. After a while, it gets hard to hear yourself think. That is the problem these books are trying to solve. Daimon Classics takes the greatest writings of philosophy from the ancient world and puts them in plain, honest language. These are adaptations, not translations. Every argument the original author made is still here. Every important claim is still here. The language has just been cleared away so you can actually read them. These writers lived thousands of years ago. They were thinking about the same things you think about. Who am I? What actually matters? How should I spend my time? What do I owe to other people? What do I owe to myself? They have a lot to say. It is worth hearing. Read slowly. Argue with the pages. Come back to them later. Your daimon is waiting. Know Your Ethos