Fragments (130-134)

Epictetus being asked how a man should give pain to his enemy answered, By preparing himself to live the best life that he can.[*]

Let no wise man be averse to undertaking the office of a magistrate (τοῦ ἄρχειν): for it is both impious for a man to withdraw himself from being useful to those who have need of our services, and it is ignoble to give way to the worthless; for it is foolish to prefer being ill-governed to governing well.

Nothing is more becoming to him who governs than to despise no man and not show arrogance, but to preside over all with equal care.[*]

[In poverty any man lives (can live) happily, but very seldom in wealth and power (ἀρχαῖς). The value of poverty excels so much that no just man (νόμιμος) would exchange poverty for disreputable wealth, unless indeed the richest of the Athenians Themistocles, the son of Neocles, was better than Aristides and Socrates, though he was poor in virtue. But the wealth of Themistocles and Themistocles himself have perished and have left no name. For all things die with death in a bad man, but the good is eternal.][*]

Remember that such was, and is, and will be the nature of the universe, and that it is not possible that the things which come into being can come into being otherwise than they do now; and that not only men have participated in this change and transmutation, and all other living things which are on the earth, but also the things