With the possibility of banishment to an
_ergastulum_ perpetually before his eyes, he defines a prison as being
any situation in which a man is placed against his will; to Socrates for
instance the prison was no prison, for he was there willingly, and no
man _need_ be in prison, against his will if he has learnt, as one of
his primary duties, a cheerful acquiescence in the inevitable. By the
expression of such sentiments Epictetus had anticipated by fifteen
hundred years the immortal truth so sweetly expressed by Lovelace:
"_Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage_;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for a hermitage."
Situated as he was, we can hardly wonder that thoughts like these
occupied a large share of the mind of Epictetus, or that he had taught
himself to lay hold of them with the firmest possible grasp. When asked,
"Who among men is rich?" he replied, "He who suffices for himself;" an
expression which contains the germ of the truth so forcibly expressed in
the Book of Proverbs, "The backslider in heart shall be filled with his
own ways, and a good man _shall be satisfied from himself_".
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