Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 2 Oldfather 1928.djvu/259

 you have yourself admitted that you have one master. And let it not comfort you that he is, as you say, the common master of all men, but realize that you are a slave in a great house. So also the men of Nicopolis are wont to shout: "Yea, by the fortune of Caesar, we are free men!"

However, let us leave Caesar out of account, if you please, for the present, but answer me this: Were you never in love with anyone, a pretty girl, or pretty boy, a slave, a freedman?—What, then, has that to do with being either slave or free?—Were you never commanded by your sweetheart to do something you didn't wish to do? Did you never cozen your pet slave? Did you never kiss his feet? Yet if someone should compel you to kiss the feet of Caesar, you would regard that as insolence and most extravagant tyranny. What else, then, is slavery? Did you never go out at night where you didn't want to go? Did you never spend more than you wanted to spend? Did you never utter words with groaning and lamentation, endure to be reviled, to have the door shut in your face? Well, if you are ashamed to admit such things about yourself, observe what Thrasonides says and does, a man who had served on so many campaigns—perhaps more even than you have. First, he went out at night when Geta hasn't the courage to go abroad, but, if the latter had been compelled by him to do so, he would have gone out crying aloud and bewailing his bitter slavery. And then what does Thrasonides say? Says he, 249