previous next

Against a person who showed his partizanship in an unseemly way in a theatre.

THE governor of Epirus having shown his favour to an actor in an unseemly way and being publicly blamed on this account, and afterwards having reported to Epictetus that he was blamed and that he was vexed at those who blamed him, Epictetus said, What harm have they been doing? These men also were acting as partizans, as you were doing. The governor replied, Does then any person show his partizanship in this way? When they see you, said Epictetus, who are their governor, a friend of Caesar and his deputy, showing partizanship in this way, was it not to be expected that they also should show their partizanship in the same way? for if it is not right to show partizanship in this way, do not do so yourself; and if it is right, why are you angry if they followed your example? For whom have the many to imitate except you, who are their superiors? to whose example should they look when they go to the theatre except yours? See bow the deputy of Caesar looks on: he has cried out, and I too then will cry out. He springs up from his seat, and I will spring up. His slaves sit in various parts of the theatre and call out. I have no slaves, but I will myself cry out as much as I can and as loud as all of them together. You ought then to know when you enter the theatre that you enter as a rule and example to the rest how they ought to look at the acting. Why then did they blame you? Because every man hates that which is a hindrance to him. They wished one person to be crowned; you wished another. They were a hindrance to you, and you were a hindrance to them. You were found to be the stronger; and they did what they could; they blamed that which hindered them. What then would you have? That you should do what you please, and they should not even say what they please? And what is the wonder? Do not the husband- men abuse Zeus when they are hindered by him? do not the sailors abuse him? do they ever cease abusing Caesar? What then? does not Zeus know? is not what is said reported to Caesar? What then does he do? he knows that, if he punished all who abuse him, he would have nobody to rule over. What then? when you enter the theatre, you ought to say not, Let Sophron (some actor) be crowned, but you ought to say this, Come let me maintain my will in this matter so that it shall be conformable to nature: no man is dearer to me than myself. It would be ridiculous then for me to be hurt (injured) in order that another who is an actor may be crowned. Whom then do I wish to gain the prize? Why the actor who does gain the prize; and so he will always gain the prize whom I wish to gain it.—But I wish Sophron to be crowned.— Celebrate as many games as you choose in your own house, Nemean, Pythian, Isthmian, Olympian, and proclaim him victor. But in public do not claim more than your due, nor attempt to appropriate to yourself what belongs to all. If you do not consent to this, bear being abused: for when you do the same as the many, you put yourself on the same level with them.


The Discourses of Epictetus, with the Encheridion and Fragments. Epictetus. George Long. translator. London. George Bell and Sons. 1890.

This text was converted to electronic form by optical character recognition and has been proofread to a high level of accuracy.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus English (Thomas Wentworth Higginson, 1890)
load focus Greek (1916)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Epirus (Greece) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: