The Book of Epictetus 5 · The daily drill. Written down by Arrian, from his lecture room
Epictetus, born at Hierapolis in Phrygia about the year 55, died at Nicopolis in Greece about 135. He was born a slave, belonging to a freedman of Nero’s household. While still a slave he was allowed to attend lectures, and was later freed. He was lame in one leg. About 93 the philosophers were expelled from Rome and he went to Greece, opened a school at Nicopolis, and stayed there for the rest of his life. The fence is already set in Covenant 5, and this book does not set it again. What this book says is where the fence runs: not around events, but around your judgement of them. He wrote nothing himself; what is here his student Arrian took down in the lecture room. (cf. Acts of the Apostles 5.48)
5.1Remember that you are an actor in a play.
5.2Another man wrote it.
5.3If it is short, it is short. If it is long, it is long.
5.4If you are cast as a poor man, play the poor man well.
5.5If as a cripple, as a magistrate, as an ordinary man — the same.
5.6Choosing the part is not your business. Playing well the one assigned is your business.
5.7Someone asks: then have I no choice at all?
5.8You have less choice than you suppose, and it matters more than you suppose.
5.9You do not choose whether you fall ill. You choose how you treat people while ill.
5.10You do not choose whether you are wronged. You choose what comes out of your mouth afterward.
5.11That small patch of ground is the whole of your ground. (cf. The Highest Covenant 5.3)
5.12Most of a man’s strength goes outside the fence, contending for parts that were never assigned to him.
5.13The little he spends inside it is the only play he actually acted in.