When Archelaus sent a message to express the intention of making him rich, Socrates bade the messenger inform him that at Athens four quarts of meal might be bought for three halfpence, and the fountains flow with water.

"If then my existing possessions are insufficient for me, at any rate I am sufficient for them, and so they too are sufficient for me.

Do you not see that Polus acted the part of Oedipus in his royal state with no less beauty of voice than that of Oedipus in Colonos, a wanderer and beggar?
Shall then a noble man appear inferior to Polus, so as not to act well every character imposed upon him by Divine Providence; and shall he not imitate Ulysses, who even in rags was no less conspicuous than in the curled nap of his purple cloak ?" Generally speaking, the view which Epictetus took of life is always simple, and always consistent; it is a view which gave him consolation among life's troubles, and strength to display some of its noblest virtues, and it may be summed up in the following passages of his famous _Manual_:-- "Remember," he says, "that you are an actor of just such a part as is assigned you by the Poet of the play; of a short part, if the part be short; of a long part, if it be long.

Should He wish you to act the part of a beggar, take care to act it naturally and nobly; and the same if it be the part of a lame man, or a ruler, or a private man; for _this_ is in your power, to act well the part assigned to you; but to _choose_ that part is the function of another." "Let not these considerations afflict you: 'I shall live despised, and the merest nobody;' for if dishonour be an evil, you cannot be involved in evil any more than you can be involved in baseness through any one else's means.

Is it then at all _your_ business to be a leading man, or to be entertained at a banquet?
By no means.