by Epictetus
[38] No; if you perform really well, one says to another, ‘He put the bit about Xerxes nicely, I thought,’ and another says, ‘I liked his description of the battle of Thermopylae better.’
Does that sound like the lecture of a philosopher?
BOOK IV
IV 1 On freedom
[1] Free is the person who lives as he wishes and cannot be coerced, impeded or compelled, whose impulses cannot be thwarted, who always gets what he desires and never has to experience what he would rather avoid.
Now, who would want to go through life ignorant of how to achieve this?
‘No one.’
[2] Who wants to live with delusion and prejudice, being unjust, undisciplined, mean and ungrateful?
‘No one.’
[3] No bad person, then, lives the way he wants, and no bad man is free. [4] Who wants to live life experiencing sadness, envy and pity, being frustrated in their desires and liable to experience what they want to avoid?
‘No one.’
[5] So, can we find any bad person who is without sadness, fear, frustration or misfortune?
‘No.’
No more, then, can we find one who is free.
[6] Now, a two-term consul will tolerate such talk only on condition that you add, ‘But you know that already; it hardly applies to you.’ If you tell him the truth and say, [7] ‘You’re just as much enslaved as someone sold into captivity three times over,’ don’t expect anything but a punch in the nose. ‘How am I a slave?’ he wants to know. [8] ‘My father is free, my mother is free, and there is no deed of sale for me. Add to which I’m a senator, I’m a personal friend of Caesar, I’ve been a consul and I own many slaves personally.’ [9] In the first place, Senator, sir, your father could have been slavish in the same respect as you, along with your mother, your grandfather and all your ancestors down the line. [10] And even if they were as free as free can be, what does that have to do with you? Suppose that they were noble, and you are depraved? Or that they were courageous, whereas you are a coward? Or that they were disciplined, while you are dissolute?
[11] ‘What’s that got to do with being a slave?’
Doesn’t it seem to you that acting against one’s will, under protest and compulsion, is tantamount to being a slave?
[12] ‘Maybe, but who has power to compel me except Caesar, who rules over everyone?’
[13] So you admit that you have at least one master. And don’t let the fact that Caesar rules over everyone, as you say, console you: it only means that you’re a slave in a very large household. [14] You remind me of the citizens of Nicopolis, who are forever proclaiming, ‘By the grace of Caesar, we are free.’1
[15] If you like, however, for the moment we’ll leave Caesar out of account. Just tell me this: haven’t you ever been in love with someone, be they man or woman, slave or free?
[16] ‘How does that affect whether I am slave or free?’
[17] Weren’t you ever commanded by your sweetheart to do something you didn’t want to do? Did you never flatter your pet slave, and even kiss her feet? And yet if someone were to force you to kiss Caesar’s feet, you’d regard it as hubris and the height of tyranny.
[18] If your lovesick condition isn’t slavery, then what is? Didn’t you ever risk going out at night where you didn’t want to go, spend more money than you had intended, say things in the course of the evening in accents of misery and woe, put up with being mocked, and finally locked out? [19] If you’re too embarrassed to share your own experience, though, just consider the words and actions of Thrasonides, who fought more campaigns, perhaps, than you.2 To begin with, he went out at a time of night that even his slave wouldn’t dare do, or if forced to, only with much moaning and groaning about his bitter condition. [20] And what does Thrasonides say? ‘A pretty woman has made of me a perfect slave, something not even my fiercest enemies could accomplish.’ [21] Poor guy, to be enslaved to a whore, and a cheap one at that! What right do you still have to call yourself free? What point is there in boasting about your military victories?
[22] Then the man calls for a sword to end it all, yells at the slave who refuses to give him one out of compassion, sends gifts to his girl – who still despises him – begs and implores her and rejoices when he meets with the least success. [23] But until he succeeds in suppressing his lust and anxiety, how is he really free?
[24] Consider how we apply the idea of freedom to animals. [25] There are tame lions that people cage, raise, feed and take with them wherever they go. Yet who will call such a lion free? The easier its life, the more slavish it is. No lion endowed with reason and discretion would choose to be one of these pet specimens.
[26] The birds above us, when they are caught and raised in a cage, will try anything for the sake of escape. Some starve to death rather than endure their condition. [27] Those that survive – barely, grudgingly, wasting away – fly off in an instant when they find the least little opening to squeeze through, so great is their need for their native freedom, so strong the desire to be independent and unconfined. [28] ‘Well, what’s wrong with you here in your cage?’ ‘You can ask? I was born to fly wherever I like, to live in the open air, to sing whenever I want. You take all this away from me and then say, “What’s wrong with you?” ’
[29] For this reason we will only call those animals free that refuse to tolerate captivity and escape instead by dying as soon as they are caught. [30] Apropos of which, Diogenes says somewhere that one way to guarantee freedom is to be ready to die. To the Persian king he wrote, ‘You can no more make slaves of the Athenians than you can make slaves of the fish of the sea.’ [31] ‘Why? Can’t Athenians be captured?’ ‘Capture them, and straight away they’ll give you the slip and be gone, like fish, which die directly they are caught and taken on board. And if the Athenians die when taken captive, what good in the end is all your military might?’ [32] There’s the word of a free man who has given the subject of freedom considerable thought and, sure enough, discovered the real meaning of the word. If you continue to look for it in the wrong place, however, don’t be surprised if you never find it.
[33] The slave urgently prays to be emancipated. Why? Do you suppose it’s because he can’t wait to pay the tax collector the five per cent tax?3 No, it’s because he imagines that, lacking liberty, he’s been thwarted and unhappy all his life up to then. [34] ‘Once I’m set free,’ he says, ‘everything will be roses right away. I won’t have to wait on anybody, I can talk to everyone as an equal and a peer, travel wherever I like, come and go as I please.’
[35] Then he is liberated, but now, lacking a place to eat, he looks around for someone to sweet-talk and dine with. Next he resorts to prostitution and, if he gets a sugar daddy, he suffers the most degrading fate of all, having now fallen into a far more abject slavery than the one he escaped. [36] Even if he succeeds on his own, his low breeding makes him fall in love with a common prostitute. When she refuses him he falls apart and longs to be a slave again.
[37] ‘What did I lack then, anyway? Another person supplied me with clothes, shoes and food and took care of me when I was sick; and I had little enough to do by way of service in return. Now I go through hell catering to many people instead of just the one. [38] Still – if I can only manage to get a ring on my finger, then finally my life will be blissful and complete.’4 Well, to get it he has to endure the usual humiliations; and once he has it, it’s the same old story again.
[39] So then he thinks: ‘If I serve a stint in the military all my troubles will be over.’ Consequently he joins the army, suffers everything a rank-and-file soldier has to suffer, and enlists for a second and then a third tour of duty.5 [40] Finally, when he crowns it off by becoming a senator, then he becomes a slave in fine company, then he experiences the poshest and most prestigious form of enslavement.
[41] No more foolishness. The man has to learn ‘what each specific thing means’, as Socrates often said, and stop casually applying preconceptions to individual cases. [42] T
his is the cause of everyone’s troubles, the inability to apply common preconceptions to particulars.6 Instead the opinions of men as to what is bad diverge.∗ [43] One thinks that he is unwell, when it’s nothing of the kind; the problem is that he is not adapting preconceptions correctly. One imagines that he is poor, another that he has a difficult mother or father, still another that Caesar is not disposed in his favour. This is all caused by one and the same thing, namely, ignorance of how to apply one’s preconceptions.
[44] Who, after all, does not have a preconception of ‘bad’, to the effect that it is harmful, that it should be avoided, and that we should use every means to get rid of it? One preconception does not conflict with another, [45] conflict arises when it comes to their application. What is this ‘bad’, then, which is also harmful and needs to be avoided? One says it’s not being Caesar’s friend:7 he’s off the mark, he’s not applying preconceptions properly, and is distressed because he’s stuck on something that doesn’t meet the definition. Because if he succeeds in securing Caesar’s friendship he still hasn’t got what he wants – [46] the same thing, really, that we all want: to live in peace, to be happy, to do as we like and never be foiled or forced to act against our wishes.
When a man gains Caesar’s friendship, does he stop being hindered or constrained, does he live in peace and happiness? Whom should we ask? Well, who is more to be trusted than the person who has actually gained his confidence? [47] So step up, sir, and tell us, when did you sleep more soundly, now or before you became intimate with Caesar? ‘By the gods, stop mocking my condition. You don’t know what agonies I endure. I can’t even fall off to sleep before someone comes and announces, “The emperor is up already, and about to make his appearance,” and then I’m harassed by one worry and crisis after another.’
[48] Well, and when did you dine with greater contentment, now or earlier? Hear him testify to this, too. He says that if he’s not invited to dine with Caesar, he’s an emotional wreck; and if he is invited, he behaves like a slave asked to sit beside his master, anxious the whole time lest he say or do something gauche. But is he afraid that, like a slave, he’ll get whipped? He should be so lucky. As befits a personage as lofty as a friend of Caesar, he’s afraid his head will be chopped off.
[49] When did you bathe with more ease, when were you more relaxed at your exercise – in a word, which life would you prefer, the present or the previous one? [50] I could swear that there is no one so crude or forgetful that they don’t actually regret their fortune in precise proportion to how close to Caesar they’ve become.
[51] Well, if neither kings, so-called, nor their companions live as they please, who is left that can be considered free? Look and you will find: nature has endowed you with resources to discover the truth. And if you can’t infer the answer yourself using only these resources, [52] listen to what those who have explored the question have to say:
‘Do you think freedom is something good?’
‘The greatest good of all.’
‘Can anyone in possession of the greatest good be unhappy or unfortunate?’
‘No.’
‘Anyone you see who is unhappy, then, malcontent or disheartened, you can confidently characterize as not being free?’
‘Yes.’
[53] Now we have surely advanced beyond consideration of buying, selling and other such mundane transactions.8 Because if you were right to agree to what we said above, then if he is unhappy the Great King himself cannot be free, nor can any prince, consul or two-term consul.
‘Granted.’
[54] Well, then, answer me something else: do you think freedom is grand and glorious, a thing of some significance?
‘Of course.’
And can anyone possessed of something so grand, glorious and important feel inferior?
‘Impossible.’
[55] Then whenever you see someone grovel before another, or flatter them insincerely, you can safely assume that that person is not free – and not just if a meal is at stake, but even when they abase themselves for the sake of a governorship or consulship. In fact, you can call the people who behave that way for small gains petty slaves, while the latter deserve to be called slaves on a grand scale.
[56] ‘I would have to agree with that too.’
And do you think of freedom as something autonomous and self-sufficient?
‘Yes.’
Then whoever is liable to be hindered or compelled by someone else is assuredly not free. [57] And please don’t research the status of their grandfather and great-grandfather, or inquire into whether they were bought or sold. If you hear someone say ‘Master’ sincerely and with feeling, call him a slave no matter if twelve bodyguards9 march ahead of him. Or if you hear, ‘God, the things I put up with!’, call the person a slave. If you just see him disconsolate, angry or out of sorts, call him a slave – albeit a slave in a purple toga.
[58] Even if he does none of these things, don’t call him free just yet, acquaint yourself with his judgements, in case they show any sign of constraint, disappointment or disaffection. And if you find him so disposed, call him a slave on holiday at the Saturnalia.10 Say that his master is away; when he returns, the man’s true condition will be made plain to you.
[59] ‘When who returns?’
Whoever has the means to give or take away any of the things he values.
‘Do we have that many masters?’
We do. Because over and above the rest we have masters in the form of circumstances, which are legion. And anyone who controls any one of them controls us as well. [60] No one, you realize, fears Caesar himself, it is death, exile, dispossession, jail and disenfranchisement that they are afraid of. Nor is Caesar loved, unless by chance he is personally deserving; we love money, a tribuneship, a military command or consulship. But when we love, hate or fear such things, then the people who administer them are bound to become our masters. [61] As a result we even honour them as gods, because we associate godhead with whatever has the capacity to confer most benefit. Then we posit a false minor premise: this man has the power to confer the most benefit. And the conclusion that follows from these premises is necessarily false as well.11
[62] What is it then that renders a person free and independent? Money is not the answer, nor is a governorship, a consulship, or even a kingdom. [63] Something else needs to be found. Well, what makes for freedom and fluency in the practice of writing? Knowledge of how to write. The same goes for the practice of playing an instrument. It follows that, in the conduct of life, there must be a science to living well. [64] Now, you have heard this stated as a general principle, consider how it is borne out in particular cases. Take someone in want of something under the control of people other than himself; is it possible for him to be unrestricted or unrestrained?
‘No.’
[65] Consequently he cannot be free either. Now consider: is there nothing that is under our control, is everything under our control – or are there some things we control, and others that we don’t?
‘What do you mean?’
[66] Is it within your power to have your body perform perfectly whenever you want?
‘No.’
Or be in good health?
‘No.’
Or attractive?
‘Again, no.’
Well, then, the body isn’t yours, and is subject to everything physically stronger.
‘Granted.’
[67] What about land – can you have as much as you want, for as long as you want, in the condition you prefer?
‘No.’
And what about slaves?
‘No again.’
Clothing?
‘No.’
Your house?
‘No.’
Your horses?
‘No to all of the above.’
And if more than anything else you want your children to live, or your wife, your brother, or your friends, is this within your power to effect?
‘No, that isn’t either.’<
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[68] Is there nothing that is under your authority, that you have exclusive control over – does anything of the kind exist?
‘I don’t know.’
[69] Well, look at it this way. Can anyone make you assent to a false proposition?
‘No, no one can.’
So in the field of assent you cannot be hindered or obstructed.
‘Evidently.’
[70] And can anyone force you to choose something to which you’re opposed?
‘They can: when they threaten me with death or imprisonment, they compel my choice.’
But what if you despise death and imprisonment – are you still in that person’s thrall?
‘No.’
[71] Is your attitude towards death your affair, then?
‘It is.’
Therefore your will is your own business too.
‘I grant it.’
And that goes for being opposed to something, also.
[72] ‘But suppose I choose to walk, and someone obstructs me?’
What part of you will they obstruct? Certainly not your power of assent?
‘No, my body.’
Your body, yes – as they might obstruct a rock.
‘Perhaps; but the upshot is, now I’m not allowed to walk.’
[73] Whoever told you, ‘Walking is your irrevocable privilege’? I said only that the will to walk could not be obstructed. Where use of the body and its cooperation are concerned, you’ve long been told that that isn’t your responsibility.
[74] ‘Very well.’
And can you be forced by anyone to desire something against your will?
‘No.’
Or to plan for, or project – or, in a word, regard outside impressions in any one way at all?
[75] ‘No again. But when I’ve already conceived a wish for something, they can stop me from getting it.’
If you wish for something that is under your authority and cannot be obstructed, how will they stop you?
‘They can’t.’
And who says if you desire something outside your authority that you cannot be obstructed?
