"I too," he says, "once made this very remark to Rufus when he rebuked me for not discovering the suppressed premiss in some syllogism.

'What!' said I, 'have I then set the Capitol on fire, that you rebuke me thus ?' 'Slave!' he answered, 'what has the Capitol to do with it?
Is there no _other_ fault then short of setting the Capitol on fire?
Yes! to use one's own mere fancies rashly, at random, anyhow; not to follow an argument, or a demonstration, or a sophism; not, in short, to see what makes for oneself or not, in questioning and answering--is none of these things a fault ?'" Sometimes he used to test the Stoical endurance of his pupil by pointing out the indignities and tortures which his master might at any moment inflict upon him; and when Epictetus answered that, after all, such treatment was what man _had_ borne, and therefore _could_ bear, he would reply approvingly that every man's destiny was in his own hands; that he need lack nothing from any one else; that, since he could derive from himself magnanimity and nobility of soul, he might despise the notion of receiving lands or money or office.

"But," he continued, "when any one is cowardly or mean, one ought obviously in writing letters about such a person to speak of him as a corpse, and to say, 'Favour us with the corpse and blood of So-and-so,' For?
in fact, such a man _is_ a mere corpse, and nothing more; for if he were anything more, he would have perceived that no man ever suffers any real misfortunes by another's means." I do not know whether Mr.Ruskin is a student of Epictetus, but he, among others, has forcibly expressed the same truth.

"My friends, do you remember that old Scythian custom, when the head of a house died?
How he was dressed in his finest dress, and set in his chariot, and carried about to his friends' houses; and each of them placed him at his table's head, and all feasted in his presence?
Suppose it were offered to you, in plain words, as it _is_ offered to you in dire facts, that you should gain this Scythian honour gradually, while you yet thought yourself alive....

Would you take the offer verbally made by the death-angel?
Would the meanest among us take it, think you?
Yet practically and verily we grasp at it, every one of us, in a measure; many of us grasp at it in the fulness of horror." The way in which Musonius treated would-be pupils much resembled the plan adopted by Socrates.