"Discourses" - читать интересную книгу автора (Epictetus)

superior to me? No, but they supply some of my wants, and for this
reason I take care of them. Well, do I not attend to my ass? Do I
not wash his feet? Do I not clean him? Do you not know that every
man has regard to himself, and to you just the same as he has regard
to his ass? For who has regard to you as a man? Show me. Who wishes to
become like you? Who imitates you, as he imitates Socrates? "But I can
cut off your head." You say right. I had forgotten that I must have
regard to you, as I would to a fever and the bile, and raise an
altar to you, as there is at Rome an altar to fever.

What is it then that disturbs and terrifies the multitude? is it the
tyrant and his guards? I hope that it is not so. It is not possible
that what is by nature free can be disturbed by anything else, or
hindered by any other thing than by itself. But it is a man's own
opinions which disturb him: for when the tyrant says to a man, "I will
chain your leg," he who values his leg says, "Do not; have pity":
but he who values his own will says, "If it appears more
advantageous to you, chain it." "Do you not care?" I do not care. "I
will show you that I am master." You cannot do that. Zeus has set me
free: do you think that he intended to allow his own son to be
enslaved? But you are master of my carcass: take it. "So when you
approach me, you have no regard to me?" No, but I have regard to
myself; and if you wish me to say that I have regard to you also, I
tell you that I have the same regard to you that I have to my pipkin.

This is not a perverse self-regard, for the animal is constituted so
as to do all things for itself. For even the sun does all things for
itself; nay, even Zeus himself. But when he chooses to be the Giver of
rain and the Giver of fruits, and the Father of gods and men, you
see that he cannot obtain these functions and these names, if he is
not useful to man; and, universally, he has made the nature of the
rational animal such that it cannot obtain any one of its own proper
interests, if it does not contribute something to the common interest.
In this manner and sense it is not unsociable for a man to do
everything, for the sake of himself. For what do you expect? that a
man should neglect himself and his own interest? And how in that
case can there be one and the same principle in all animals, the
principle of attachment to themselves?

What then? when absurd notions about things independent of our will,
as if they were good and bad, lie at the bottom of our opinions, we
must of necessity pay regard to tyrants; for I wish that men would pay
regard to tyrants only, and not also to the bedchamber men. How is
it that the man becomes all at once wise, when Caesar has made him
superintendent of the close stool? How is it that we say
immediately, "Felicion spoke sensibly to me." I wish he were ejected
from the bedchamber, that he might again appear to you to be a fool.

Epaphroditus had a shoemaker whom he sold because he was good for
nothing. This fellow by some good luck was bought by one of Caesar's