What does the throw decide?
Epictetus opens one chapter with a claim that can sound like permission to be careless. He calls material things “indifferent”. His example is a game of dice. A player cannot choose the throw. You have to watch what the player does with it before you can say anything about skill. Now listen to the question that follows. If outward things are indifferent, can we afford to handle them carelessly? Try answering the objector in the language of the game before you read what Epictetus says. II.5
Stay with the chapter when the example changes. A traveller can choose a helmsman, a crew and a time to sail. Once a storm breaks, the helmsman has a job that the passenger cannot do for him. The danger gives a different weight to the distinction we accepted at the gaming table. How much of it will we grant when the ship itself may go down?
Epictetus returns to a lost ship in a short exercise. Asked what happened, the pupil is to answer simply that the ship was lost. Try supplying the next sentence yourself. Does it describe a further fact you could have witnessed, or add a judgement about how badly someone has fared? That difference is easier to hear in your own words. III.8
A musician in two settings
One way back into a difficult chapter is to find another place where Epictetus puts a similar question to somebody else. A man sings to the lyre with ease when he is alone. He can still find every note when he walks into the theatre. Yet now he trembles. What has changed? For Epictetus the audience brings a second wish into play. The musician wants a reputation, and none of his hours of practice can decide what the people listening will think of him. II.13
Now turn to IV.12, where someone wants to play today, and then to sing. Epictetus asks what prevents him. Read a little further and the questions become quite particular. Is this the time for a song? Who else is here? The musician who cannot choose what an audience thinks can still attend to the people who will hear him. Near the end of the chapter Epictetus asks whether a person who practises attention can escape every error. Set his answer beside the warning about letting your attention slip for a moment, with which the chapter began. To escape even a few errors would make the effort worthwhile.
The Roman numeral in IV.12 gives the book, and the number after the dot gives the chapter. You can use the same reference when the page numbers change. If a word such as “indifferent” catches you, try its glossary example, then return to the sentence that puzzled you. What sense does the word have there?
