Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 2 Oldfather 1928.djvu/477



From Agrippinus

When Agrippinus was governor, he used to try to persuade the persons whom he sentenced that it was proper for them to be sentenced. "For," he would say, "it is not as an enemy or as a brigand that I record my vote against them, but as a curator and guardian; just as also the physician encourages the man upon whom he is operating, and persuades him to submit to the operation."

From Epictetus

Nature is wonderful, and, as Xenophon says, "fond of her creatures." At all events we love and tend our body, the most unpleasant and dirtiest thing that there is; why, if we had had to tend our neighbour's body for no more than five days, we could not have endured it. Just consider what a nuisance it is to get up in the morning and brush some other person's teeth, and then after attending to a call of nature to wash those parts. Truly it is wonderful to love a thing for which we perform so many services every day. I stuff this bag here; and then I empty it; what is more tiresome? But I must serve God. For that reason I remain, and endure to wash this miserable paltry body, and to 467