Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 2 Oldfather 1928.djvu/187

 a man who has listened to reason, who has read the accounts of Socrates as coming from Socrates, not as though they were from Lysias, or Isocrates! "'I have often wondered by what arguments ever'—no, but 'by what argument ever'—this form is smoother than the other!" You have been reading this literature just as you would music-hall songs, haven't you? Because, if you had read them in the right way, you would not have lingered on these points, but this is the sort of thing rather that would have caught your eye: "Anytus and Meletus can kill me, but they cannot hurt me"; and: "I have always been the kind of man to pay attention to none of my own affairs, but only to the argument which strikes me as best upon reflection." And for that reason who ever heard Socrates saying, "I know something and teach it"? But he used to send one person here and another there. Therefore men used to go to him to have him introduce them to philosophers, and he used to take them around and introduce them. But no, your idea of him, no doubt, is that, as he was taking them along, he used to say, "Come around to-day and hear me deliver a discourse in the house of Quadratus"!

Why should I listen to you? Do you want to exhibit to me the clever way in which you put words together? You do compose them cleverly, man; and what good is it to you? "But praise me." 177