Epictetus · The Handbook
Chapter 15
Remember: you should behave in life as you do at a banquet. Something is passed around and reaches you: stretch out your hand and take your share politely. It passes on: do not hold it back. It has not come yet: do not send your desire out ahead to meet it, but wait until it reaches you. So with children, so with a wife, so with public office, so with wealth – and one day you will be worthy to dine with the gods. And if you do not even take these things when they are set in front of you, but look past them, then you will not only dine with the gods but rule with them. This is how Diogenes and Heraclitus and men like them lived – and why they were rightly called divine, and were divine.
μέμνησο, ὅτι ὡς ἐν συμποσίῳ σε δεῖ ἀναστρέφεσθαι. περιφερόμενον γέγονέ τι κατὰ σέ· ἐκτείνας τὴν χεῖρα κοσμίως μετάλαβε. παρέρχεται· μὴ κάτεχε. οὔπω ἥκει· μὴ ἐπίβαλλε πόρρω τὴν ὄρεξιν, ἀλλὰ περίμενε, μέχρις ἂν γένηται κατὰ σέ. οὕτω πρὸς τέκνα, οὕτω πρὸς γυναῖκα, οὕτω πρὸς ἀρχάς, οὕτω πρὸς πλοῦτον· καὶ ἔσῃ ποτὲ ἄξιος τῶν θεῶν συμπότης. ἂν δὲ καὶ παρατεθέντων σοι μὴ λάβῃς, ἀλλ’ ὑπερίδῃς, τότε οὐ μόνον συμπότης τῶν θεῶν ἔσῃ, ἀλλὰ καὶ συνάρχων. οὕτω γὰρ ποιῶν Διογένης καὶ Ἡράκλειτος καὶ οἱ ὅμοιοι ἀξίως θεῖοί τε ἦσαν καὶ ἐλέγοντο.