Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 2 Oldfather 1928.djvu/27

 as women? And if that had been the case, what good would you be getting of your self-adornment? For whom would you be adorning yourself, if all were women? Your paltry body doesn't please you, eh? Make a clean sweep of the whole matter; eradicate your—what shall I call it?—the cause of your hairiness; make yourself a woman all over, so as not to deceive us, not half-man and half-woman. Whom do you wish to please? Frail womankind? Please them as a man. "Yes, but they like smooth men." Oh, go hang! And if they liked sexual perverts, would you have become such a pervert? Is this your business in life, is this what you were born for, that licentious women should take pleasure in you? Shall we make a man like you a citizen of Corinth, and perchance a warden of the city, or superintendent of ephebi, or general, or superintendent of the games? Well, and when you have married are you going to pluck out your hairs? For whom and to what end? And when you have begotten boys, are you going to introduce them into the body of citizens as plucked creatures too? A fine citizen and senator and orator! Is this the kind of young men we ought to pray to have born and brought up for us?

By the gods, young man, may such not be your fate! But once you have heard these words go away and say to yourself, "It was not Epictetus who said these things to me; why, how could they have occurred to him? but it was some kindly god or other speaking through him. For it would not have occurred to Epictetus to say these things, because he is not in 17