Discourses - Book I   

that which they can do; and what we do care for, that they cannot
do. How did Socrates behave with respect to these matters? Why, in
what other way than a man ought to do who was convinced that he was
a kinsman of the gods? "If you say to me now," said Socrates to his
judges, "'We will acquit you on the condition that you no longer
discourse in the way in which you have hitherto discoursed, nor
trouble either our young or our old men,' I shall answer, 'you make
yourselves ridiculous by thinking that, if one of our commanders has
appointed me to a certain post, it is my duty to keep and maintain it,
and to resolve to die a thousand times rather than desert it; but if
God has put us in any place and way of life, we ought to desert
it.'" Socrates speaks like a man who is really a kinsman of the
gods. But we think about ourselves as if we were only stomachs, and
intestines, and shameful parts; we fear, we desire; we flatter those
who are able to help us in these matters, and we fear them also.
A man asked me to write to Rome about him, a man who, as most people
thought, had been unfortunate, for formerly he was a man of rank and
rich, but had been stripped of all, and was living here. I wrote on
his behalf in a submissive manner; but when he had read the letter, he
gave it back to me and said, "I wished for your help, not your pity:
no evil has happened to me."
Thus also Musonius Rufus, in order to try me, used to say: "This and
this will befall you from your master"; and I replied that these
were things which happen in the ordinary course of human affairs.
"Why, then," said he, "should I ask him for anything when I can obtain
it from you?" For, in fact, what a man has from himself, it is
superfluous and foolish to receive from another? Shall I, then, who am
able to receive from myself greatness of soul and a generous spirit,
receive from you land and money or a magisterial office? I hope not: I
will not be so ignorant about my own possessions. But when a man is
cowardly and mean, what else must be done for him than to write
letters as you would about a corpse. "Please to grant us the body of a
certain person and a sextarius of poor blood." For such a person is,
in fact, a carcass and a sextarius of blood, and nothing more. But
if he were anything more, he would know that one man is not
miserable through the means of another.

CHAPTER 10

Against those who eagerly seek preferment at Rome

If we applied ourselves as busily to our own work as the old men
at Rome do to those matters about which they are employed, perhaps
we also might accomplish something. I am acquainted with a man older
than myself who is now superintendent of corn at Rome, and remember
the time when he came here on his way back from exile, and what he
said as he related the events of his former life, and how he
declared that with respect to the future after his return he would
look after nothing else than passing the rest of his life in quiet and
tranquillity. "For how little of life," he said, remains for me." I