Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 1 Oldfather 1925.djvu/343

 any layman that you please, and the musician pays no attention to him; but in a matter of which he has no knowledge, and which he has never studied, there he is in anxiety. What is the meaning of this? Why, he simply does not know what a crowd is, or the applause of a crowd; to be sure, he has learned how to strike the lowest and the highest strings on the cithara, but what the praise of the multitude is, and what function it has in life, that he neither knows nor has studied. Hence he must needs tremble and turn pale.

Now then, I cannot say that the man is not a citharoede, when I see anyone in a state of fear, but I can say something else of him, and, indeed, not one thing only, but a number of things. And first of all, I call him a stranger and say: This man does not know where in the world he is, but though he has been living here so long a time, he is ignorant of the laws of the city and its customs, what he is allowed to do and what he is not allowed to do. Nay more, he has never even called in a lawyer to tell him and explain to him what are the usages conformable with law; yet he does not write a will without knowing how he ought to write it or else calling in an expert, nor does he just casually affix his seal to a bond or give a written guarantee; but without the services of a lawyer he exercises desire and aversion and choice and design and purpose. How do I mean "without the services of a lawyer"? Why, he does not know that he is wishing for things that are not vouchsafed him, and wishing to avoid the inevitable, and he does not know either what is his own or what is another's. Did he but know, he would never feel hindered, never constrained, would