Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 2 Oldfather 1928.djvu/465

 person, as though into a dirty and defiled vessel, turn, change, are spoiled, and (as he himself says κυνικώτερον) become urine, or something, it may be, dirtier than urine.

The same Epictetus, moreover, as we have heard from Favorinus, was in the habit of saying that there were two vices which are far more severe and atrocious than all others, want of endurance and want of self-control, when we do not endure or bear the wrongs which we have to bear, or do not abstain from, or forbear, those matters and pleasures which we ought to forbear. "And so," he says, "if a man should take to heart these two words and observe them in controlling and keeping watch over himself, he will, for the most part, be free from wrongdoing, and will live a highly peaceful life." These two words, he used to say, were Ἀνέχου and Ἀπέχου.

When the salvation of our souls and regard for our true selves are at stake, something has to be done, even without stopping to think about it, a saying of Epictetus which Arrian quotes with approval.

From the homilies of Arrian, exhorting to virtue

Now when Archelaus sent for Socrates with the intention of making him rich, the latter bade the messenger take back the following answer: "At Athens four quarts of barley-meal can be bought for an obol, and there are running springs 455