Translated by P.E. Matheson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1916)
Sonnet 4.6 Summary
Sonnet 4.6 Summary
Very short. Someone asks how to eat in a way pleasing to the gods. Epictetus turns it around: eat justly, with modesty and self-control, and you already are. Then he redirects toward the harder case — when the slave brings lukewarm water or doesn't come at all. Can you refrain from anger there? That too is pleasing to the gods.
The rebuke to slave-owners is pointed: you call them yours because you bought them, but they share Zeus as their forefather just as you do. Lording over them because of legal ownership is looking at the earth, at the "laws of the dead," while ignoring the laws of the gods entirely.
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WHEN some one asked Epictetus how one may eat so as to please the gods, he said, If you can eat justly, and with good feeling and, it may be, with self-control and modesty, may you not also eat so as to please the gods? And when you call for hot water and the slave does not answer, or answers and brings it luke-warm, or is not to be found in the house, is it not pleasing to the gods that you should not be angry nor break into a passion?
'How then is one to bear with such persons?'
Slave, will you not bear with your own brother, who has Zeus for his forefather, and is born as a son of the same seed as you and of the same
heavenly descent? You were appointed to a place of superiority like this, and are you straightway going to constitute yourself a despot? Will you not remember what you are and whom you are ruling? that they are kinsmen, born your brothers, children of Zeus?
'But I have bought them, and they have not bought me.'
Do you see where your eyes are looking? You are looking at the earth, at what is lowest and basest, at these miserable laws of the dead, and you regard not the laws of the gods.