Kitap 1
4
The only real thing is to study how to rid life of lamentation, and complaint, and Alas! and I am undone, and misfortune, and failure; and to learn what death, what exile, what a prison, what poison is; that he may be able to say in a prison, like Socrates, My dear Crito, if it thus pleases the gods, thus let it be; and not, Wretched old man, have I kept my gray hairs for this! [Do you ask] who speaks thus? Do you think I quote some mean and despicable person? Is it not Priam who says it? Is it not Oedipus? Nay, how many kings say it? For what else is tragedy but the dramatized sufferings of men, bewildered by an admiration of externals? If one were to be taught by fictions that things beyond our will are nothing to us, I should rejoice in such a fiction, by which I might live prosperous and serene. But what your own aims are, it is your business to consider.
4
Of what service, then, is Chrysippus to us?
