CHAPTER 13
How everything may he done acceptably to the gods
When some one asked, how may a man eat acceptably to the gods, he
answered: If he can eat justly and contentedly, and with equanimity,
and temperately and orderly, will it not be also acceptably to the
gods? But when you have asked for warm water and the slave has not
heard, or if he did hear has brought only tepid water, or he is not
even found to be in the house, then not to be vexed or to burst with
passion, is not this acceptable to the gods? "How then shall a man
endure such persons as this slave?" Slave yourself, will you not
bear with your own brother, who has Zeus for his progenitor, and is
like a son from the same seeds and of the same descent from above? But
if you have been put in any such higher place, will you immediately
make yourself a tyrant? Will you not remember who you are, and whom
you rule? that they are kinsmen, that they are brethren by nature,
that they are the offspring of Zeus? "But I have purchased them, and
they have not purchased me." Do you see in what direction you are
looking, that it is toward the earth, toward the pit, that it is
toward these wretched laws of dead men? but toward the laws of the
gods you are not looking.
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