What then should a man have in readiness in such circumstances?  What else than this?  What is mine, and what is not mine; and what is permitted to me, and what is not permitted to me.  I must die.  Must I then die lamenting?  I must be put in chains.  Must I then also lament?  I must go into exile.  Does any man then hinder me from going with smiles and cheerfulness and contentment?  Tell me the secret which you possess.  I will not, for this is in my power.  But I will put you in chains.  Man, what are you talking about?  Me, in chains?  You may fetter my leg, but my will not even Zeus himself can overpower.  I will throw you into prison.  My poor body, you mean.  I will cut your head off.  When then have I told you that my head alone cannot be cut off?  These are the things which philosophers should meditate on, which they should write daily, in which they should exercise themselves.

What then did Agrippinus say?  He said, “I am not a hindrance to myself.”  When it was reported to him that his trial was going on in the Senate, he said:  “I hope it may turn out well; but it is the fifth hour of the day”—­this was the time when he was used to exercise himself and then take the cold bath,—­“let us go and take our exercise.”  After he had taken his exercise, one comes and tells him, “You have been condemned.”  “To banishment,” he replies, “or to death?” “To banishment.”  “What about my property?” “It is not taken from you.”  “Let us go to Aricia then,” he said, “and dine.”

* * * * *

How A man on every occasion can maintain his proper character.—­To the rational animal only is the irrational intolerable; but that which is rational is tolerable.  Blows are not naturally intolerable.  How is that?  See how the Lacedaemonians endure whipping when they have learned that whipping is consistent with reason.  To hang yourself is not intolerable.  When then you have the opinion that it is rational, you go and hang yourself.  In short, if we observe, we shall find that the animal man is pained by nothing so much as by that which is irrational; and, on the contrary, attracted to nothing so much as to that which is rational.

Only consider at what price you sell your own will:  if for no other reason, at least for this, that you sell it not for a small sum.  But that which is great and superior perhaps belongs to Socrates and such as are like him.  Why then, if we are naturally such, are not a very great number of us like him?  Is it true then that all horses become swift, that all dogs are skilled in tracking footprints?  What then, since I am naturally dull, shall I, for this reason, take no pains?  I hope not.  Epictetus is not superior to Socrates; but if he is not inferior, this is enough for me; for I shall never be a Milo, and yet I do not neglect my body; nor shall I be a Croesus, and yet I do not neglect my property; nor, in a word, do we neglect looking after anything because we despair of reaching the highest degree.