Take the instance of anger.  “Do you wish not to be passionate? do not then cherish the habit within you, and do not add any stimulant thereto.  Be calm at first, and then number the days in which you have not been in a rage.  I used to be angry every day, now it is only every other day, then every third, then every fourth day.  But should you have passed even thirty days without a relapse, then offer a sacrifice to God.  For the habit is first loosened, then utterly eradicated.  ’I did not yield to vexation today, nor the next day, nor so on for two or three months, but I restrained myself under various provocations.’  Be sure, if you can say that, that it will soon be all right with you.”

But how is one to do all this? that is the great question, and Epictetus is quite ready to give you the best answer he can.  We have, for instance, already quoted one passage in which (unlike the majority of Pagan moralists) he shows that he has thoroughly mastered the ethical importance of controlling even the thought of wickedness.  Another anecdote about Agrippinus will further illustrate the same doctrine.  It was the wicked practice of Nero to make noble Romans appear on the stage or in gladiatorial shows, in order that he might thus seem to have their sanction for his own degrading displays.  On one occasion Florus, who was doubting whether or not he should obey the mandate, consulted Agrippinus on the subject. “Go by all means,” replied Agrippinus.  “But why don’t you go, then?” asked Florus. “Because", said Agrippinus, “I do not deliberate about it.”  He implied by this answer that to hesitate is to yield, to deliberate is to be lost; we must act always on principles, we must never pause to calculate consequences.  “But if I don’t go,” objected Florus, “I shall have my head cut off.”  “Well, then, go, but I won’t.”  “Why won’t you go?” “Because I do not care to be of a piece with the common thread of life; I like to be the purple sewn upon it.”

And if we want a due motive for such lofty choice Epictetus will supply it.  “Wish,” he says, “to win the suffrages of your own inward approval, wish to appear beautiful to God.  Desire to be pure with your own pure self, and with God.  And when any evil fancy assails you, Plato says, ’Go to the rites of expiation, go as a suppliant to the temples of the gods, the averters of evil.’  But it will be enough should you even rise and depart to the society of the noble and the good, to live according to their examples, whether you have any such friend among the living or among the dead.  Go to Socrates, and gaze on his utter mastery over temptation and passion; consider how glorious was the conscious victory over himself!  What an Olympic triumph!  How near does it place him to Hercules himself.’  So that, by heaven, one might justly salute him, ’Hail, marvellous conqueror, who hast conquered, not these miserable boxers and athletes, nor these gladiators