Silanus the Christian - Edwin Abbott Abbott

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and Silanus occasionally describe themselves as “finding marginal notes” indicating variations in their MSS. of the gospels. In all such cases the imaginary “marginal notes” are based on actual various readings or interpolations which will be given in the volume of Notes. Most of these are of an early date, and may be based on much earlier originals; and care has been taken to exclude any that are of late origin. But the reader must bear in mind that we have no MSS. of the gospels, and therefore no “marginal notes,” of so early a date as 118 A.D.

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Page 49, for “offending to” read “offending.”
” 134, for “a divine” read “divine.”

       THE FIRST LECTURE

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      “I forbid you to go into the senate-house.” “As long as I am a senator, go I must.” Two voices were speaking from one person—the first, pompous, coarse, despotic; the second, refined, dry, austere. There was nothing that approached stage-acting—only a suggestion of one man swelling out with authority, and of another straightening up his back in resistance. These were the first words that I heard from Epictetus, as I crept late into the lecture-room, tired with a long journey over-night into Nicopolis.

      I need not have feared to attract attention. All eyes were fixed on the lecturer as I stole into a place near the door, next my friend Arrian, who was absorbed in his notes. What was it all about? In answer to my look of inquiry Arrian pushed me his last sheet with the names “Vespasian” and “Helvidius Priscus” scrawled large upon it. Then I knew what it meant. It was a story now nearly forty years old—which I had often heard from my father’s old friend, Æmilius Scaurus—illustrating the duty of obeying the voice of the conscience rather than the voice of a king. Epictetus, after his manner, was throwing it into the form of a dialogue:—

      “Vespasian. I forbid you to go into the senate-house.

      “Priscus. As long as I am a senator, go I must.

      “Vespasian. Go, then, but be silent.

      “Priscus. Do not ask my opinion, and I will be silent.

      “Vespasian. But I am bound to ask it.

      “Priscus. And I am bound to answer, and to answer what I think right.

      “Vespasian. Then I shall kill you.

      “Priscus. Did I ever say that I could not be killed? It is yours to kill; mine, to die fearless.”

      I give his words almost as fully as Arrian took them down. But his tone and spirit are past man’s power to put on paper. He flashed from Emperor to Senator like the zig-zag of lightning with a straight down flash at the end. This was always his way. He would play a thousand parts, seeming, superficially, a very Proteus; but they were all types of two characters, the philosopher and the worldling, the follower of the Logos and the follower of the flesh. Moreover, he was always in earnest, in hot earnest. On the surface he would jest like Menander or jibe like Aristophanes; but at bottom he was a tragedian. At one moment he would point to his halting leg and flout himself as a lame old grey-beard with a body of clay. In the next, he was “a son of Zeus,” or “God’s own son,” or “carrying about God.” Never at rest, he might deceive a stranger into supposing that he was occasionally rippling and sparkling with real mirth like a sea in sunlight. But it was never so. It was a sea of molten metal and there was always a Vesuvius down below.

      I suspect that he never knew mirth or genial laughter even as a child. He was born a slave, his master being Epaphroditus, a freedman of Nero’s and his favourite, afterwards killed by Domitian. I have heard—but not from Arrian—that this master caused his lameness. He was twisting his leg one day to see how much he could bear. The boy—for he was no more—said with a smile, “If you go on, you will break it,” and then, “Did not I tell you, you would break it?” True or false, this story gives the boy as I knew the man. You might break his leg but never his will. I do not know whether Epaphroditus, out of remorse, had him taught philosophy; but taught he was, under one of the best men of the day, and he acquired such fame that he was banished from Rome under Domitian, with other philosophers of note—whether at or before the time when Domitian put Epaphroditus to death I cannot say. In one of his lectures he described how he was summoned before the Prefect of the City with the other philosophers: “Come,” said the Prefect, “come, Epictetus, shave off your beard.” “If I am a philosopher,” he replied, “I am not going to shave it off.” “Then I shall take your head off.” “If it is for your advantage, take it off.”

      But now to return to my first lecture. Among our audience were several men of position and one at least of senatorial rank. Some of them seemed a little scandalized at the Teacher’s dialogue. It was not likely that the Emperor would take offence, for in the second year of Hadrian we were not in a Neronian or Domitian atmosphere; moreover, our Teacher was known to be on good terms with the new Emperor. But perhaps their official sense of propriety was shocked; and, in the first sentence of what follows, Epictetus may have been expressing their thoughts: “ ‘So you, philosophers, teach people to despise the throne!’ Heaven forbid! Which of us teaches anyone to lay claim to anything over which kings have authority? Take my body, take my goods, take my reputation! Take my friends and relations! ‘Yes,’ says the ruler, ‘but I must also be ruler over your convictions.’ Indeed, and who gave you this authority?”

      Epictetus went on to say that if indeed his pupils were of the true philosophic stamp, holding themselves detached from the things of the body and with their minds fixed on the freedom of the soul, he would have no need to spur them to boldness, but rather to draw them back from over-hasty rushing to the grave; for, said he, they would come flocking about him, begging and praying to be allowed to teach the tyrant that they were free, by finding freedom at once in self-inflicted death: “Here on earth, Master, these robbers and thieves, these courts of justice and kings, have the upper hand. These creatures fancy that they have some sort of authority over us, simply because they have a hold on our paltry flesh and its possessions! Suffer us, Master, to shew them that they have authority over nothing!” If, said he, a pupil of this high spirit were brought before the tribunal of one of the rulers of the earth, he would come back scoffing at such “authority” as a mere scarecrow: “Why all these preparations, to meet no enemy at all? The pomp of his authority, his solemn anteroom, his gentlemen of the chamber, his yeomen of the guard—did they all come to no more than this! These things were nothing, and I was preparing to meet something great!”

      On the scholar of the unpractical and cowardly type, anxiously preparing “what to say” in his defence before the magistrate’s tribunal, he poured hot scorn. Had not the fellow, he asked, been practising “what to say”—all his life through? “What else,” said he, “have you been practising? Syllogisms and convertible propositions!” Then came the reply, in a whine, “Yes, but he has authority to kill me!” To which the Teacher answered, “Then speak the truth, you pitiful creature. Cease your imposture and give up all claim to be a philosopher. In the lords of the earth recognise your own lords and masters. As long as you give them this grip on you, through your flesh, so long must you be at the beck and call of every one that is stronger than you are. Socrates and Diogenes had practised ‘what to say’ by the practice of their lives. But as for you—get you back to your own proper business, and never again budge from it! Back to your own snug corner, and sit there at your leisure, spinning your syllogisms:

      ‘In thee is not

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