as he ought?  The office of a Prefect.  Does he also obtain the power of using his office well?  Why do I still strive to enter (Caesar’s chamber)?  A man scatters dried figs and nuts:  the children seize them, and fight with one another; men do not, for they think them to be a small matter.  But if a man should throw about shells, even the children do not seize them.  Provinces are distributed:  let children look to that.  Money is distributed; let children look to that.  Praetorships, consulships, are distributed; let children scramble for them, let them be shut out, beaten, kiss the hands of the giver, of the slaves:  but to me these are only dried figs and nuts.  What then?  If you fail to get them, while Caesar is scattering them about, do not be troubled; if a dried fig come into your lap, take it and eat it; for so far you may value even a fig.  But if I shall stoop down and turn another over, or be turned over by another, and shall flatter those who have got into (Caesar’s) chamber, neither is a dried fig worth the trouble, nor anything else of the things which are not good, which the philosophers have persuaded me not to think good.

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To A person who had been changed to A character of shamelessness.—­When you see another man in the possession of power (magistracy), set against this the fact that you have not the want (desire) of power; when you see another rich, see what you possess in place of riches:  for if you possess nothing in place of them, you are miserable; but if you have not the want of riches, know that you possess more than this man possesses and what is worth much more.

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What things we ought to despise and what things we ought to value.—­The difficulties of all men are about external things, their helplessness is about external.  What shall I do? how will it be? how will it turn out? will this happen? will that?  All these are the words of those who are turning themselves to things which are not within the power of the will.  For who says, How shall I not assent to that which is false? how shall I not turn away from the truth?  If a man be of such a good disposition as to be anxious about these things I will remind him of this:  Why are you anxious?  The thing is in your own power, be assured; do not be precipitate in assenting before you apply the natural rule.  On the other side, if a man is anxious (uneasy) about desire, lest it fail in its purpose and miss its end, and with respect to the avoidance of things, lest he should fall into that which he would avoid, I will first kiss (love) him, because he throws away the things about which others are in a flutter (others desire) and their fears, and employs his thoughts about his own affairs and his own condition.  Then I shall say