Let not such considerations as these distress you:
"I shall live in discredit, and be nobody anywhere."
For if discredit be an evil, you can no more be involved in evil through another, than in baseness. Is
it any business of yours, then, to get power, or to be
admitted to an entertainment? By no means. How
then, after all, is this discredit? And how is it true
that you will be .nobody anywhere; when you ought
to be somebody in those things only which are within
your own power, in which you may be of the greatest
consequence? "But my friends will be unassisted."
What do you mean by unassisted? They will not
have money from you; nor will you make them
Roman citizens. Who told you, then, that these are
[p. 2226]
among the things within our own power, and not
rather the affairs of others? And who can give
to another the things which he himself has not?
" Well, but get them, then, that we too may have a
share." If I can get them with the preservation of
my own honor and fidelity and self-respect, show
me the way, and I will get them; but if you require
me to lose my own proper good, that you may gain
what is no good, consider how unreasonable and foolish you are. Besides, which would you rather have,
a sum of money, or a faithful and honorable friend?
Rather assist me, then, to gain this character, than
require me to do those things by which I may lose
it. Well, but my country, say you, as far as depends
upon me, will be unassisted. Here, again, what assistance is this you mean? It will not have porticos
nor baths of your providing? And what signifies
that? Why, neither does a smith provide it with
shoes, nor a shoemaker with arms. It is enough if
every one fully performs his own proper business.
And were you to supply it with another faithful and
honorable citizen, would not he be of use to it?
Yes. Therefore neither are you yourself useless to
it. "What place, then," say you, " shall I hold in
the state?" Whatever you can hold with the preservation of your fidelity and honor. But if, by desiring to be useful to that, you lose these, how can
you serve your country, when you have become faithless and shameless?
[p. 2227]
The Works of Epictetus: His Discourses, in Four Books, the Enchiridion, and Fragments. Epictetus. Thomas Wentworth Higginson. translator. New York. Thomas Nelson and Sons. 1890.
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