Your question is reasonable; but I am anxious how I shall speak to him.  Cannot you then speak to him as you choose?  But I fear that I may be disconcerted?  If you are going to write the name of Dion, are you afraid that you would be disconcerted?  By no means.  Why? is it not because you have practised writing the name?  Certainly.  Well, if you were going to read the name, would you not feel the same? and why?  Because every art has a certain strength and confidence in the things which belong to it.  Have you then not practised speaking? and what else did you learn in the school?  Syllogisms and sophistical propositions?  For what purpose? was it not for the purpose of discoursing skilfully? and is not discoursing skilfully the same as discoursing seasonably and cautiously and with intelligence, and also without making mistakes and without hindrance, and besides all this with confidence?  Yes.  When then you are mounted on a horse and go into a plain, are you anxious at being matched against a man who is on foot, and anxious in a matter in which you are practised, and he is not?  Yes, but that person (to whom I am going to speak) has power to kill me.  Speak the truth, then, unhappy man, and do not brag, nor claim to be a philosopher, nor refuse to acknowledge your masters, but so long as you present this handle in your body, follow every man who is stronger than yourself.  Socrates used to practice speaking, he who talked as he did to the tyrants, to the dicasts (judges), he who talked in his prison.  Diogenes had practised speaking, he who spoke as he did to Alexander, to the pirates, to the person who bought him.  These men were confident in the things which they practised.  But do you walk off to your own affairs and never leave them:  go and sit in a corner, and weave syllogisms, and propose them to another.  There is not in you the man who can rule a state.

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To Naso.—­When a certain Roman entered with his son and listened to one reading, Epictetus said, This is the method of instruction; and he stopped.  When the Roman asked him to go on, Epictetus said, Every art when it is taught causes labor to him who is unacquainted with it and is unskilled in it, and indeed the things which proceed from the arts immediately show their use in the purpose for which they were made; and most of them contain something attractive and pleasing.  For indeed to be present and to observe how a shoemaker learns is not a pleasant thing; but the shoe is useful and also not disagreeable to look at.  And the discipline of a smith when he is learning is very disagreeable to one who chances to be present and is a stranger to the art:  but the work shows the use of the art.  But you will see this much more in music; for if you are present while a person is learning, the discipline will appear most disagreeable; and yet the results of music are pleasing and delightful to those who know nothing of music.  And here we conceive the work of a