As on a voyage when the vessel has reached a port,
if you go out to get water, it is an amusement by the
way to pick up a shell fish or some bulb, but your
thoughts ought to be directed to the ship, and you ought
to be constantly watching if the captain should call, and
then you must throw away all those things, that you may
not be bound and pitched into the ship like sheep: so in
life also, if there be given to you instead of a little bulb
and a shell a wife and child, there will be nothing to
prevent (you from taking them). But if the captain
should call, run to the ship, and leave all those things
without regard to them. But if you are old, do not even
go far from the ship, lest when you are called you make
default.
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The Discourses of Epictetus, with the Encheridion and Fragments. Epictetus. George Long. translator. London. George Bell and Sons. 1890.
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