The Enchiridion (24-26)

Let not such considerations as these distress you: I shall live in discredit, and be nobody anywhere. For if discredit be an evil, you can no more be involved in evil through another, than in baseness. Is it any business of yours, then, to get power, or to be admitted to an entertainment? By no means. How then, after all, is this discredit? And how is it true that you will be .nobody anywhere; when you ought to be somebody in those things only which are within your own power, in which you may be of the greatest consequence? But my friends will be unassisted. What do you mean by unassisted? They will not have money from you; nor will you make them Roman citizens. Who told you, then, that these are

Is any one preferred before you at an entertainment, or in courtesies, or in confidential intercourse? If these things are good, you ought to rejoice that he. has them; and if they are evil, do not be grieved that you have them not. And remember that you cannot be permitted to rival others in externals, without using the same means to obtain them. For how can he who will not haunt the door of any man, will not attend him, will not praise him, have an equal share with him who does these things? You are unjust, then, and unreasonable, if you are unwilling to pay the price for which these things are sold, and would have them for nothing. For how much are lettuces sold? An obolus, for instance. If another, then, paying an obolus, takes the lettuces, and you, not paying it, go without them, do not imagine that he has gained any advantage over you. For as he has the lettuces, so you have the obolus which you did not give. So, in the present case, you have not been invited to such a person’s entertainment, because you have not paid him the price for which a supper is sold. It is sold for praise; it is sold for attendance. Give him, then, the value, if it be for your advantage. But if you would at the same time not pay the one, and yet receive the other, you are unreasonable and foolish. Have you nothing, then, in place of the supper? Yes, indeed you have: not

The will of Nature may be learned from things upon which we are all agreed. As, when our neighbor’s boy has broken a cup, or the like, we are ready at once to say, These are casualties that will happen; be assured, then, that when your own cup is likewise broken, you ought to be affected just as when another’s cup was broken. Now apply this to greater things. Is the child or wife of another dead? There is no one who would not say, This is an accident of mortality. But if any one’s own child happens to die, it is immediately, Alas ! how wretched am I! It should be always remembered how we are affected on hearing the same thing concerning others.