The Book of Epictetus 6 · 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)
6.1Do not expound your principles in company. Do them.
6.2At a banquet, do not say how a man ought to eat. Eat as you believe one should.
6.3Sheep do not carry grass back to the shepherd to show how much they ate.
6.4They digest it, and produce wool and milk.
6.5You likewise: do not bring up what you have read for others to look at. Turn it into what you do.
6.6Someone comes and says: so-and-so is speaking ill of you behind your back.
6.7Do not defend yourself. Say only: he clearly does not know my other faults, or he would have mentioned those as well.
6.8This is not self-abasement. It is putting the matter back where it belongs.
6.9If someone asks about your learning, do not begin at once.
6.10Consider first: is he asking about the thing, or does he want to watch me perform?
6.11It is the beginner who most loves to expound. He expounds because expounding is easier than doing.
6.12If you have truly learned it, men will see it in how you eat, how you wait, how you take being wronged.
6.13If they cannot see it there, you have not learned it.
6.14Your book is for you to read. It is not for others to look at.