Meditations X.28

Picture to thyself every one that is grieved at any occurrence whatever or dissatisfied, as being like the pig which struggles and screams when sacrificed; like it too him who, alone upon his bed, bewails in silence the fetters of our fate; and that to the rational creature alone has it been granted to submit willingly to what happens, mere submission being imperative on all.⁴¹

• 41.Compare Seneca’s Epistles 107: ducunt volentem fata nolentem trahunt; On the Happy Life 15; Cleanthes, Hymn to Zeus: ὡς ἕψομαί γ’ ἄοκνος· ἦν δὲ μὴ θέλω κακὸς γενόμενος, οὐδὲν ἧττον ἕψομαι.

  Seneca’s Latin, in translation: “the fates lead the willing, and drag the unwilling.” It renders the lines of Cleanthes that open “Lead me, O Zeus, and thou, Destiny,” which Epictetus quotes at the close of the Manual; the Greek, in translation: “for I will follow unflinching; and if I am unwilling, becoming base, I shall follow none the less.”