In his
_Discourse on Ostentation_, Epictetus says that Rufus was in the habit
of remarking to his pupils, "If you have leisure to praise me, I can
have done you no good." "He used indeed so to address us that each one
of us, sitting there, thought that some one had been privately telling
tales against _him_ in particular, so completely did Rufus seize hold of
his characteristics, so vividly did he portray our individual faults."
Such was the man under whose teaching Epictetus grew to maturity, and it
was evidently a teaching which was wise and noble, even if it were
somewhat chilling and austere. It formed an epoch in the slave's life;
it remoulded his entire character; it was to him the source of blessings
so inestimable in their value that it is doubtful whether they were
counter-balanced by all the miseries of poverty, slavery, and contempt.
He would probably have admitted that it was _better_ for him to have
been sold into cruel slavery, than it would have been to grow up in
freedom, obscurity, and ignorance in his native Hierapolis. So that
Epictetus might have found, and did find, in his own person, an
additional argument in favour of Divine Providence: an additional proof
that God is kind and merciful to all men; an additional intensity of
conviction that, if our lots on earth are not equal, they are at least
dominated by a principle of justice and of wisdom, and each man, on the
whole, may gain that which is best for him, and that which most
honestly and most heartily he desires.
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