Translated by P.E. Matheson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1916)
Sonnet 4.6 Summary
Sonnet 4.6 Summary
The final chapter is the shortest and functions as a coda to the entire book. You are about to enter the palace of some powerful man. Remember: another watches from above, and it is him you must please.
The inner dialogue is a checklist: exile — indifferent. Prison — indifferent. Death — indifferent. The will — good. The end — to follow God. Have these answers ready; they don't change because the room is grander.
And the payoff: when you walk in and actually see the vestibule, the guards, the chamberlains — you'll wonder what all the fear was about. The preparation turns out to have been for nothing, because there was nothing there to fear in the first place. All of Book 1 has been building to this: the man who has learned to distinguish what is his from what isn't walks into any room, before any power, without trembling.
Text
Text
WHEN you appear before one of the mighty of the earth, remember that Another looks from above on what is happening and that you must please Him rather than this man. He that is above inquires of you: 'What did you say in the school about exile and prison and bonds and death and dishonour?'
I said they were 'indifferent'.
'What do you call them now, then? Have they changed?'
No.
'Have you changed then?'
No.
'Tell me then what things are indifferent.'
Things which lie outside the will's control.
'Tell me what follows.'
Things indifferent concern me not at all.
'Tell me also what you thought were "good things".'
A right will and a faculty of dealing rightly with impressions. 'And what did you think was the end?'
To follow Thee.
'Do you still say that?'
Yes. I say the same now as before.
Go on then into the palace in confidence and remember these things, and you shall see how a young man who has studied what he ought compares with men who have had no study. By the gods I imagine that you will feel thus: 'Why do we make these many and great preparations for nothing? Is this what authority meant? Are the vestibule, the chamberlains, the guards no more than this? Was it for this that I listened to those long discourses? These terrors were naught, and I made ready for them all the time as though they were great matters.'
The Discourses.
Book I Notes
^1-1 This technical Stoic word, as Matheson points out, includes 'the power of presenting an image to the mind's eye' and 'the image so presented'. It is almost the equivalent of 'the data of consciousness'.
^1-2 These words frequently recur in Epictetus.
^1-3 Primary notions. 'They are certain general terms used commonly by men (such as good, happiness, justice), and their proper application not being reasoned out by the individual before he uses them, they are in a sense anticipations of reasoned knowledge.' (Matheson)
^1-4 The Greek says, 'to hold the pot'.
^1-5 The interruption here of one of the listeners is perfectly typical of the informal character of the Discourses.
^1-6 This is a technical Stoic term.
^1-7 This is a summary of the three spheres of man's activity, according to the Stoics: (a) The will to get and will to avoid; (b) impulse positive and negative; (c) assent. (Matheson)
^1-8 'A premiss is said to "vary" when it becomes untrue at some subsequent time.' (Matheson)
^1-9 'to barathron. The ravine at Athens into which the corpses of criminals were thrown: hence used metaphorically of the extreme of misery or degradation.' (Matheson)
^1-10 Epictetus uses Zeus 'interchangeably with "God" and "the divine", to express the Divine Spirit of the universe.' (Matheson)
^1-11 Sometimes this is rendered literally by the word 'daemon' and it connoted to the Stoic the higher element within man, his reason.
^1-12 This is 'the governing principle of the soul, and as the highest aspect of the soul is rational, it is often equivalent to dianoia and logismos, but must not be regarded as purely intellectual: it is the soul as feeling and willing, as well as thinking.' (Matheson)
^1-13 Cf. above, note 3.
^1-14 'Epictetus, lecturing at Nicopolis in Epirus, speaks of sending his pupil to Rome to spy out the land, to see how things are going in the capital under Domitian, who had expelled all philosophers.' (Matheson)
^1-15 Medea.