Discourses and Selected Writings (37 page)

20.
follow the gods:
A Stoic and Platonic motto.

21.
He arranged for there to be… family and friends:
The form of theodicy outlined here, which seeks to show that good cannot exist without evil, was argued by Chrysippus: ‘Nothing is more
foolish than to maintain that there could have been goods without the coexistence of evils. For since goods are opposite to evils, the two must necessarily exist in opposition to each other, supported by a kind of opposed interdependence. And there is no such quality without its matching opposite. For how could there be perception of justice if there were no injustice? What else is justice, if not the removal of injustice?… Goods and evils, fortune and misfortune, pain and pleasure, are tied to each other in polar opposition’ (Aulus Gellius,
Attic Nights
VII 1,1). The idea of ‘opposed interdependence’ is similar to what Epictetus calls ‘the harmony of the whole’. The last clause – ‘and he gave us each a body… and associates’ – anticipates another defence of Stoic providence found below (§18), and elsewhere (e.g. I 1, 8–9) motivated by the problems entailed in having a body, and living in a community, with people not all of whom, unfortunately, were Stoics.

22.
Conversely, Socrates… chose to be there
: In Plato’s
Phaedo
(98e–99b), Socrates is shown making light of his imprisonment, and in the
Crito
he gives reasons for declining a hypothetical offer of escape.

23.
the small shadow that the earth casts
: This is what astronomers call the ‘umbra’ and what the rest of us call ‘night’, i.e. the darkness that covers a hemisphere of the earth at any one time.

24.
Who says so?… I mean?
: In other words, it was not just Stoics (like Chrysippus, Zeno and Cleanthes), other notable philosophers also gave priority to the definition of terms – and (according to the Stoics), definition of terms was part of logic. Antisthenes was a Cynic philosopher; the position ascribed to him here is supported by Diogenes Laertius,
Lives of the Philosophers
VI 17. Socrates’ interest in definition motivates many of the dialogues of Plato in which he participates. The reference to Xenophon is apparently to his
Memorabilia
I 1, 16.

25.
we always err unwillingly
: The famous Socratic ‘paradox’, which the Stoics bravely defended. Here ‘unwillingly’ means ‘unwittingly’, i.e. because we do not know better.

26.
what if he’s drunk?… Or dreaming?
: ‘Really delusive impressions may come in sleep, or under the influence of wine, or insanity’ (Cicero,
Academica
II 51).

27.
the Altar of Fever at Rome
: Fever, or
Febris
in Latin, actually had three temples in Rome, the principal one on the Palatine. The cult was apotropaic, i.e. people prayed and sacrificed to it to keep it at bay.

28.
The sun moves across the sky for its own ends:
Stoics, in a departure from traditional Greek religion, held that the sun, the moon and the stars were full-fledged divinities; these celestial objects led a nomadic life in search of sustenance from the rivers, lakes and oceans below, explaining (the Stoics believed) their steady motion across the sky.

29.
appropriation:
This is one of several possible translations for the Greek word
oikeiosis,
a key concept of Stoic ethics. The principle of ‘appropriation’ views animal and human development in terms of a creature’s growing self-awareness of its own mental and physical faculties. The egoism or ‘selfishness’ that Epictetus describes and defends in this section he ties to ‘appropriation’ by way of the correlative view that, as a creature comes to appreciate its natural gifts, it wants nothing more than to protect and develop them to their fullest extent. Here Epictetus argues that in the case of man and the gods reason brings with it the realization that self-interest and altruism are compatible.

30.
Felicio:
A common name for a slave or (as here) a freedman.

31.
priesthood of Augustus:
Augustus, the first Roman emperor, received divine honours in his lifetime and continued to have his own cult in Rome and elsewhere after his death. As Nicopolis had been founded by Augustus himself after his victory over Antony, his cult was especially prominent in Epictetus’ hometown, and the priesthood of Augustus was an important public office. The priest had to lay out his own money to perform the essential functions of sacrifice, etc.

32.
once he has identified our good with the shell:
Cf. I 20, 17.

33.
we who supposedly… our children?:
Epicurus (341-271 bc) maintained that pleasure, especially bodily pleasure, was humanity’s chief good and denied that there was any natural affection between parents and children.

34.
Mouse: (Mus
in Greek), the pet name of one of Epicurus’ household slaves, liberated by the terms of his will (Diogenes Laertius,
Lives of the Philosophers
X 10 and 21).

35.
exposed:
A euphemism for the ancient practice of infanticide.

36.
Diogenes:
This is Diogenes the Cynic.

37.
I’ll wear the ordinary toga now:
The broad hem distinguished the senator’s toga, the narrow hem was reserved to the class of knights
(equites)
at Rome, and the unadorned toga was what the common person (or
pleb)
wore, so that this sequence of commands outlines a gradual loss in rank.

38.
‘Deck the palace halls… receive
me’:
The first citation is from
a choral ode of an unknown play; the second is line 1390 of Sophocles’
Oedipus the King.

39.
The chief thing… the door is open:
Cf. I 25, 18.

40.
At the Saturnalia… convention:
Play-acting, including the naming of a mock king to preside over the festivities, was a defining feature of the Roman holiday of Saturnalia.

41.
The way we handle… behaviour:
Cf. I 29, 39-41.

42.
there is another who won’t let me:
Cf. I 30, 1.

43.
Gyara:
(Or Gyaros), a barren island in the Aegean Sea that during the early Principate served as a place of penal exile.

44.
the Pyrrhonists and the Academics:
Cf. I 5; the Pyrrhonists and Academics of Epictetus’ day were Sceptic philosophers who argued that it was impossible for anything to be known with absolute certainty.

45.
I will go… to gain it:
A paraphrase of Homer,
Iliad
12. 322-8.

46.
convention:
‘Convention’
(sunetheia)
in this context means normal (complacent) reliance on the senses as a guide to everyday behaviour.

47.
‘Every Soul is deprived… will’:
Plato,
Sophist
228c.

48.
I know that the acts… children safe:
The lines are from Euripides’
Medea,
lines 1078-9. In order to get back at her unfaithful husband, Jason, Medea kills the children they had together. The lines quoted were standard in discussions of what the Greeks called
akrasia,
‘lack of control’, the inability to do what one knows is right – or to refrain from doing what one knows is wrong – for being subject to a contrary emotion or desire. Epictetus tries to show that the two lines can be reconciled with the law of psychological determinism expressed in §6. So in §7 he gives an intellectualist account of Medea’s motivation, implying that ‘But anger is master of my intentions’ need not be taken to mean that she is forced to sin under the pressure of passion; it is merely a poetic way of expressing her value system – she places revenge above her children’s welfare. As for her confession that I know that the acts I intend to do are wrong’, this amounts to no more than an admission that she knows the murders she is contemplating are criminal; but the fact that she goes forward with them demonstrates that she considers herself above the traditional laws of human society.

49.
The Phoenix
…
Hippolytus:
The
Phoenix
and the
Hippolytus
are plays by Euripides. The
Hippolytus
still survives.

50.
‘Anytus… harm
me’:
Plato,
Apology
30c.

51.
This is how I came to lose my lamp:
Cf. I 18, 15.

52.
But what if someone in authority… atheistic?:
Epictetus evokes the circumstances of Socrates’ execution on grounds of impiety.

1.
When deer… hunters’ nets:
‘The beaters use to frighten deer into the nets by stretching a cord, with brightly coloured feathers on it, across the safe openings in the woods’ (W. A. Oldfather (ed.), Epictetus,
The Discourses as Reported by Arrian, the
Manual, and Fragments,
2 vols., London and Cambridge, Mass., 1925-8, vol. 1, p. 214).

2.
Socrates used to call such fears ‘hobgoblins’:
Plato,
Phaedo
77e.

3.
The door needs to stay open… disappear:
Suicide should remain an option of last resort in intolerable material circumstances.

4.
But wasn’t Socrates… at that?:
Socrates is generally thought not to have written anything, so this passage is a puzzle.

5.
I mean, do you think… different result?:
The quotation is from Plato’s
Apology
30c. Epictetus implies that this and other statements in the
Apology
further antagonized Anytus and Meletus, Socrates’ accusers, and that his defiant attitude not only showed his indifference to worldly fortune but actually contributed to his condemnation, even though, strictly speaking, his fate at this point lay in the hands of a jury, not Anytus and Meletus, the men who originally brought the accusation. But in the sentencing portion of the trial, after the jury had found him guilty, Socrates suggests that his ‘punishment’ should consist of free meals for the rest of his life at public expense, words that -if Plato reports them accurately – would have incited the jury members and may even have influenced some to vote for death. Epictetus may allude to this additional piece of provocation on Socrates’ part in the next sentence.

6.
Heraclitus:
Not, of course, Heraclitus the famous philosopher referred to at
Enchiridion
15, but a contemporary of Epictetus otherwise unknown.

7.
it is stupid to say, ‘Tell me what to do!’:
‘Stupid’ because one has to decide for oneself what to do depending on circumstance, as the preceding section showed.

8.
this general principle:
The principle established in the opening paragraph of this chapter, concerning the importance of ‘protecting one’s own’.

9.
Diogenes:
Diogenes the Cynic philosopher, as at I 24, 6. Diogenes
rejected the polite conventions of society, including, as we learn here, reliance on letters of recommendation.

10.
analytic:
The exact meaning of
analyticon,
which I have translated – or transliterated – as ‘analytic’ is a matter of conjecture.

11.
doesn’t nature intend women to be shared?:
Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, advocated the community of wives in his book
The Republic,
just as Plato had done, to a limited extent, in his own
Republic;
cf. Fragment 15. This radical social doctrine was something of an embarrassment to later, Roman Stoics, as this section suggests.

12.
like Socrates’ fellow diners in the Symposium:
The reference is to works by Plato and Xenophon both entitled
Symposium,
featuring Socrates at a party with other cultured guests; the comparison, of course, is sarcastic.

13.
how to strike a balance… on the other:
The contrast is analogous to the contrast between ‘confidence’ and ‘caution’ drawn in II 1, and their respective objects are the same, although the terminology is different.

14.
The chips… my responsibility begins:
The text says dice, not cards, and ‘counters’ instead of chips; but since most modern dice games don’t have counters I have ventured on a different analogy. Strictly speaking, Epictetus exaggerates in saying that the fall of the dice (or deal of the cards) does not matter: some rolls (or hands) are clearly better than others. But ultimately it is what you do with what chance hands you that matters; a skilled player will know how to turn defeat into victory.

15.
It isn’t easy… would be impossible:
Cf. Diogenes Laertius,
The
Lives of the Philosophers
VII 104: ‘[The Stoics] call “indifferent” things that contribute neither to happiness nor unhappiness, like wealth, reputation, health, strength and so on. For it is possible to be happy without these, although how they are used determines one’s happiness or unhappiness.’ Thus Epictetus says that we should be indifferent toward external things or circumstances such as wealth, reputation, etc., because they too are ‘indifferent’ in a moral sense, i.e. neither good nor bad in themselves. Only virtue is good, and it consists in proper use of these external things – thus the call to be careful as well as indifferent at the same time.

16.
You will find that skilled ballplayers… sporting match:
The player who is unsure of himself is too focused on catching the ball, or throwing it, to get into the flow of the game; to the expert player the ball is only the means used to execute the essential
tasks of throwing and catching – and he doesn’t freeze when it comes his way, or need coaching by the other players as to what his next move is.