Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 1 Oldfather 1925.djvu/441

 just see what words he utters! Were not Eteocles and Polyneices born of the same mother and the same father? Had they not been brought up together, lived together, played together, slept together, many a time kissed one another? So that I fancy if anyone had seen them, he would have laughed at the philosophers for their paradoxical views on friendship. But when the throne was cast between them, like a piece of meat between the dogs, see what they say:

Eteo. Where before the wall dost mean to stand? Poly. Why asked thou this of me? Eteo. I shall range myself against thee. Poly. Mine is also that desire!

Such also are the prayers they utter.

It is a general rule—be not deceived—that every living thing is to nothing so devoted as to its own interest. Whatever, then, appears to it to stand in the way of this interest, be it a brother, or father, or child, or loved one, or lover, the being hates, accuses, and curses it. For its nature is to love nothing so much as its own interest; this to it is father and brother and kinsmen and country and God. When, for instance, we think that the gods stand in the way of our attainment of this, we revile even them, cast their statues to the ground, and burn their temples, as Alexander ordered the temples of Asclepius to be burned when his loved one died. For this reason, if a man puts together in one scale 397