Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 1 Oldfather 1925.djvu/419

 do with us? Come, do you interest yourself in sheep because they allow themselves to be shorn by us, and milked, and finally to be butchered and cut up? Would it not be desirable if men could be charmed and bewitched into slumber by the Stoics and allow themselves to be shorn and milked by you and your kind? Is not this something that you ought to have said to your fellow Epicureans only and to have concealed your views from outsiders, taking special pains to persuade them, of all people, that we are by nature born with a sense of fellowship, and that self-control is a good thing, so that everything may be kept for you? Or ought we to maintain this fellowship with some, but not with others? With whom, then, ought we to maintain it? With those who reciprocate by maintaining it with us, or with those who are transgressors of it? And who are greater transgressors of it than you Epicureans who have set up such doctrines?

What, then, was it that roused Epicurus from his slumbers and compelled him to write what he did? What else but that which is the strongest thing in men—nature, which draws a man to do her will though he groans and is reluctant? "For," says she, "since you hold these anti-social opinions, write them down and bequeathe them to others and give up your sleep because of them and become in fact yourself the advocate to denounce your own doctrines." Shall we speak of Orestes as being pursued by the Furies and roused from his slumbers? But are not the Furies and the Avengers that beset Epicurus more savage? They roused him from sleep and would not let him rest, but compelled him to herald his own miseries, just as madness and 375