to another; and when anything that belongs to others goes badly, he
says, "Woe to me, for the Hellenes are in dancer." Wretched is his
ruling faculty, and alone neglected and uncared for. "The Hellenes are
going to die destroyed by the Trojans." And if the Trojans do not kill
them, will they not die? "Yes; but not all at once." What
difference, then, does it make? For if death is an evil, whether men
die altogether, or if they die singly, it is equally an evil. Is
anything else then going to happen than the separation of the soul and
the body? Nothing. And if the Hellenes perish, is the door closed, and
is it not in your power to die? "It is." Why then do you lament "Oh,
you who are a king and have the sceptre of Zeus?" An unhappy king does
not exist more than an unhappy god. What then art thou? In truth a
shepherd: for you weep as shepherds do, when a wolf has carried off
one of their sheep: and these who are governed by you are sheep. And
why did you come hither? Was your desire in any danger? was your
aversion? was your movement? was your avoidance of things? He replies,
"No; but the wife of my brother was carried off." Was it not then a
great gain to be deprived of an adulterous wife? "Shall we be
despised, then, by the Trojans?" What kind of people are the
Trojans, wise or foolish? If they are wise, why do you fight with
them? If they are fools, why do you care about them.
In what, then, is the good, since it is not in these things? Tell
us, you who are lord, messenger and spy. Where you do not think that
it is, nor choose to seek it: for if you chose to seek it, you would
have found it to he in yourselves; nor would you be wandering out of
the way, nor seeking what belongs to others as if it were your own.
Turn your thoughts into yourselves: observe the preconceptions which
you have. What kind of a thing do you imagine the good to be? "That
which flows easily, that which is happy, that which is not impeded."
Come, and do you not naturally imagine it to be great, do you not
imagine it to be valuable? do you not imagine it to be free from harm?
In what material then ought you to seek for that which flows easily,
for that which is not impeded? in that which serves or in that which
is free? "In that which is free." Do you possess the body, then,
free or is it in servile condition? "We do not know." Do you not
know that it is the slave of fever, of gout, ophthalmia, dysentery, of
a tyrant, of fire, of iron, of everything which is stronger? Yes, it
is a slave." How, then, is it possible that anything which belongs
to the body can be free from hindrance? and how is a thing great or
valuable which is naturally dead, or earth, or mud? Well then, do
you possess nothing which is free? "Perhaps nothing." And who is
able to compel you to assent to that which appears false? "No man."
And who can compel you not to assent to that which appears true? "No
man." By this, then, you see that there is something in you
naturally free. But to desire or to be averse from, or to move
toward an object or to move from it, or to prepare yourself, or to
propose to do anything, which of you can do this, unless he has
received an impression of the appearance of that which is profitable
or a duty? "No man." You have, then, in these thongs also something
which is not hindered and is free. Wretched men, work out this, take