sold freedom
from perturbation; at such price is sold tranquillity, but nothing is
got for nothing. And when you call your slave, consider that it is
possible that he does not hear; and if he does hear, that he will do
nothing which you wish. But matters are not so well with him, but
altogether well with you, that it should be in his power for you to be
not disturbed.

XIII.

If you would improve, submit to be considered without sense and foolish
with respect to externals. Wish to be considered to know nothing; and if
you shall seem to some to be a person of importance, distrust yourself.
For you should know that it is not easy both to keep your will in a
condition conformable to nature and (to secure) external things: but if
a man is careful about the one, it is an absolute necessity that he will
neglect the other.

XIV.

If you would have your children and your wife and your friends to live
for ever, you are silly; for you would have the things which are not in
your power to be in your power, and the things which belong to others to
be yours. So if you would have your slave to be free from faults, you
are a fool; for you would have badness not to be badness, but something
else. But if you wish not to fail in your desires, you are able to do
that. Practise then this which you are able to do. He is the master of
every man who has the power over the things which another person wishes
or does not wish, the power to confer them on him or to take them away.
Whoever then wishes to be free let him neither wish for anything nor
avoid anything which depends on others: if he does not observe this
rule, he must be a slave.

XV.

Remember that in life you ought to behave as at a banquet. Suppose that
something is carried round and is opposite to you. Stretch out your hand
and take a portion with decency. Suppose that it passes by you. Do not
detain it. Suppose that it is not yet come to you. Do not send your
desire forward to it, but wait till it is opposite to you. Do so with
respect to children, so with respect to a wife, so with respect to
magisterial offices, so with respect to wealth, and you will be some
time a worthy partner of the banquets of the gods. But if you take none
of the things which are set before you, and even despise them, then you
will be not only a fellow banqueter with the gods, but also a partner
with them in power. For by acting thus Diogenes and Heracleitus and
those like them were deservedly div