The Teaching of Epictetus

OF ADORNMENT OF THE PERSON.

1. A certain young man, a rhetorician, having come to Epictetus with his hair dressed in an unusually elaborate way, and his other attire much adorned, Tell me, said Epictetus, think you not that some dogs are beautiful, and some horses, and so of the other animals?

----"I do think it," said he.

And men too--are not some beautiful and some ill-favored?

----"How otherwise?"

Whether, then, do we call each of these beautiful for the same reasons and in the same kind, or each for something proper to itself? And you shall see the matter thus: Inasmuch as we observe a dog to be formed by nature for one end, and a horse for another, and, let us say, a nightingale for another, we may in general say, not unreasonably, that each of them is then beautiful when it is excellent according to its own nature; but since the nature of each is different, different also, it seems to me, is the manner of being beautiful in each. Is it not so?

He acknowledged that it was.

Therefore, that which maketh a dog beautiful maketh a horse ill-favored; and that which maketh a horse beautiful, a dog ill-favored; if, indeed, their natures are different?

----"So it seems."

And that which maketh a beautiful Pancratiast,[1] the same maketh a wrestler not good, and a runner utterly laughable? And he who is beautiful for the Pentathlon is very bad for wrestling?

----"It is so," he said.

What is it, then, that makes a man beautiful? Is it not that which, in its kind, makes also a dog or a horse beautiful?

----"It is that," he answered.

What, then, makes a dog beautiful? The presence of the virtue of a dog. And a horse? The presence of the virtue of a horse. And what, then, a man? Is it not also the presence of the virtue of a man? And, O youth, if thou wouldst be beautiful, do thou labor to perfect this, the virtue of a human being. But what is it? Look whom you praise when you praise any without affection--is it the righteous or the unrighteous?

----"The righteous."

Is it the temperate or the profligate?

----"The temperate."

Is it the continent or the incontinent?

----"The continent."

Then making yourself such a one as you praise, you will know that you are making yourself beautiful; but so long as you neglect these things, though you sought out every device to appear beautiful, you must of necessity be ugly.

2. For thou art not flesh and hair, but a Will: if thou keep this beautiful, then wilt thou be beautiful. But so far I dare not tell thee that thou art ugly, for I think thou wilt more easily bear to hear anything else than this. But see what Socrates saith to Alcibiades, the most beautiful and blooming of men: Endeavor, then, to be beautiful; and what saith he? Curl thy locks, and pluck out the hairs of thy legs?* God forbid. But *Set thy Will in order, cast out evil doctrines.

----"And how then shall we deal with the body?"

As nature made it. Another hath cared for this; commit it to Him.

----"But what? Shall the body then be uncleansed?"

God forbid. But that which thou art and wast made by Nature, cleanse this; let a man be clean as a man, a woman as a woman, a child as a child.