Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 2 Oldfather 1928.djvu/203

 God, I shall be setting myself in opposition to Zeus, I shall be arraying myself against Him in regard to His administration of the universe. And the wages of this fighting against God and this disobedience will not be paid by "children's children," but by me myself in my own person, by day and by night, as I start up out of dreams and am disturbed, trembling at every message, with my own peace of mind depending upon letters not my own. Someone has arrived from Rome. "If only there is no bad news!" But how can anything bad for you happen in a place, if you are not there? Someone arrives from Greece. "If only there is no bad news!" In this way for you every place can cause misfortune. Isn't it enough for you to be miserable where you are? Must you needs be miserable even beyond the seas, and by letter? Is this the fashion in which all that concerns you is secure?—Yes, but what if my friends over there die?—Why, what else than that mortal men died? Or how can you wish to reach old age yourself, and at the same time not behold the death of any that you love? Do you not know that in the long course of time many different things must needs happen; fever must overcome one man, a brigand another, a tyrant a third? Because such is the character of the air about us, such that of our associates; cold and heat and unsuitable food, and journeys by land and by sea, and winds and all manner of perils; this man they destroy, that man they drive into exile, another they send on an embassy, and yet another on a campaign. Sit down, therefore, and get all wrought up at each one of these events, mourning, unfortunate, miserable, depend on something other 193