the things which are around you, all things are circumstances; but
if you call hardships by this name, what hardship is there in the
dying of that which has been produced? But that which destroys is
either a sword, or a wheel, or the sea, or a tile, or a tyrant. Why do
you care about the way of going down to Hades? All ways are equal. But
if you will listen to the truth, the way which the tyrant sends you is
shorter. A tyrant never killed a man in six months: but a fever is
often a year about it. All these things are only sound and the noise
of empty names.
"I am in danger of my life from Caesar." And am not I in danger
who dwell in Nicopolis, where there are so many earthquakes: and
when you are crossing the Hadriatic, what hazard do you run? Is it not
the hazard of your life? "But I am in danger also as to opinion." Do
you mean your own? how? For who can compel you to have any opinion
which you do not choose? But is it as to another man's opinion? and
what kind of danger is yours, if others have false opinions? "But I am
in danger of being banished." What is it to be banished? To be
somewhere else than at Rome? "Yes: what then if I should be sent to
Gyara?" If that suits you, you will go there; but if it does not,
you can go to another place instead of Gyara, whither he also will go,
who sends you to Gyara, whether he choose or not. Why then do you go
up to Rome as if it were something great? It is not worth all this
preparation, that an ingenuous youth should say, "It was not worth
while to have heard so much and to have written so much and to have
sat so long by the side of an old man who is not worth much." Only
remember that division by which your own and not your own are
distinguished: never claim anything which belongs to others. A
tribunal and a prison are each a place, one high and the other low;
but the will can be maintained equal, if you choose to maintain it
equal in each. And we shall then be imitators of Socrates, when we are
able to write paeans in prison. But in our present disposition,
consider if we could endure in prison another person saying to us.
"Would you like me to read Paeans to you?" "Why do you trouble me?
do you not know the evils which hold me? Can I in such circumstances?"
What circumstances? "I am going to die." And will other men be
immortal?

CHAPTER 7

How we ought to use divination

Through an unreasonable regard to divination many of us omit many
duties. For what more can the diviner see than death or danger or
disease, generally things of that kind? If then I must expose myself
to danger for a friend, and if it is my duty even to die for him, what
need have I then for divination? Have I not within me a diviner who
has told me the nature of good and of evil, and has explained to me
the signs of both? What need have I then to consult the viscera of
victims or the flight of birds, and why do I submit when he says,
"It is for your interest"? For does he know what is for my interest,