It is true (he admits) that Crates, a celebrated cynic, was married, but it was to a lady as self-denying as himself, and to one who had given up wealth and friends to share hardship and poverty with him.

And, if Epictetus does not venture to say in so many words that Crates in this matter made a mistake, he takes pains to point out that the circumstances were far too exceptional to be accepted as a precedent for the imitation of others.
"But," inquires the interlocutor, "how then is the world to get on ?" The question seems quite to disturb the bachelor equanimity of Epictetus; it makes him use language of the strongest and most energetic contempt: and it is only when he trenches on this subject that he ever seems to lose the nobility and grace, the "sweetness and light," which are the general characteristic of his utterances.

In spite of his complete self-mastery he was evidently a man of strong feelings, and with a natural tendency to express them strongly.

"Heaven bless us," he exclaims in reply, "are _they_ greater benefactors of mankind who bring into the world two or three evilly-squalling brats,[63] or those who, to the best of their power, keep a beneficent eye on the lives, and habits, and tendencies of all mankind?
Were the Thebans who had large families more useful to their country than the childless Epaminondas; or was Homer less useful to mankind than Priam with his fifty good-for-nothing sons ?...

Why, sir, the true cynic is a father to all men; all men are his sons and all women his daughters; he has a bond of union, a lien of affection with them all." (_Dissert_.iii.