I imagine that I see you flaring up in a temper and about to boil over; you are getting ready to exclaim: "This is the sort of thing that detracts from the weight of the teachings of you Stoics. You make great promises, promises which are not even to be desired, still less believed; then after all your big words, while you deny that a wise man is poor, you do not deny that he usually possesses neither slave nor house nor food; while you deny that a wise man is mad, you do not deny that he does lose
his reason, that he babbles crazy words, that he will venture to do whatever his violent disorder impels him to do; while you deny that a wise man is ever a slave, you do not likewise go on to deny that he will be sold, that he will do what he is ordered to do, and render to his master the services of a slave. So, for all your lofty assumption, you reach the same level as the other schools -only the names of things are changed. And so I suspect that something of this sort lurks behind this maxim also, "A wise man will receive neither injury nor insult" - a maxim which at first sight, appears noble and splendid. But it makes a great difference whether you place the wise man beyond feeling injured or beyond being injured. For if you say that he will bear injury calmly, he has no peculiar advantage; he is fortunate in possessing a common quality, one which is acquired from the very repetition of injuries - namely, endurance. If you say that he will not receive injury, that is, that no one will attempt to injure him, then, abandoning all other business, I am for becoming a Stoic."\a I assuredly did not intend to deck up the wise man with the fanciful honour of words, but to place him in the position where no injury may reach him.