Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 1 Oldfather 1925.djvu/117

 terms in his behalf. But when he had read the letter he handed it back to me, and said, "I wanted your help, not your pity; my plight is not an evil one." So likewise Rufus was wont to say, to test me, "Your master is going to do such-and-such a thing to you." And when I would say in answer. "'Tis but the lot of man," he would reply. "What then? Am I to go on and petition him, when I can get the same result from you?" For, in fact, it is foolish and superfluous to try to obtain from another that which one can get from oneself. Since, therefore, I am able to get greatness of soul and nobility of character from myself, am I to get a farm, and money, or some office, from you? Far from it! I will not be so unaware of what I myself possess. But when a man is cowardly and abject, what else can one possibly do but write letters in his behalf as we do in behalf of a corpse: "Please to grant us the carcase of so-and-so and a pint of paltry blood?" For really, such a person is but a carcase and a pint of paltry blood, and nothing more. But if he were anything more he would perceive that one man is not unfortunate because of another. 



we philosophers had applied ourselves to our own work as zealously as the old men at Rome 73