Keep in mind that you should always behave as you would do at a banquet. Something comes around to you; stretch out your hand and politely take a portion. It passes on; don’t try to stop it. It has not come yet; don’t let your appetite run ahead, but wait till the portion reaches you. If you act like this toward your children, your wife, your public positions, and your wealth, you will be worthy one day to dine with the gods. And if you don’t even take things, when they are put before you, but pass them by, you will not only dine with the gods but also share their rule. It was by acting like that that Diogenes and Heracles and others like them were deservedly divine and called so. (Ench. 15)
Epictetus uses a banquet as a metaphor in this lesson. However, this banquet appears different from anything we moderns would attend. The Greek word Epictetus used is συμποσίῳ. The title of Plato’s famous Symposium is derived from that same Greek word, and it provides a model for this metaphor. To make his point in this lesson, Epictetus asks us to imagine we are guests at such a banquet. However, to apply this lesson in our life, we must first understand the metaphor.
A Greek banquet or symposium during the time of Plato was slightly different from those of Roman times. Epictetus’s students would have been familiar with the latter. However, those distinctions don’t affect the metaphor or the lesson. Let’s set the scene for such a banquet to help us understand this lesson.
The host, a person you know, has invited you to a banquet. When you arrive, you’re led to a room filled with pillow-covered sofas. Participants are reclined on those sofas eating food, drinking wine, talking about important topics, and possibly delivering speeches.
The room has a predetermined seating arrangement, so you recline on your assigned sofa and engage in conversation with others you know at the banquet. Occasionally, someone might deliver a speech, read a poem, or bring up a topic of political concern for discussion. While this is going on, servers enter the room with platters of food and pitchers of wine. The servers approach each reclined guest in a predetermined order and offer them a portion of what they are serving. You know the proper etiquette for a banquet, and that means you must wait for each server to come to you to take your portion.
The preceding lessons in the Encheiridion focus on the distinction between what is up to us and not up to us. As a banquet guest, many things are not within your power—they are not up to us. So, let’s begin by determining what is and is not in our power in this banquet metaphor.
- Guests don’t choose the date or time of the banquet.
- Guests don’t choose who is invited.
- Guests don’t choose their seating location.
- Guests don’t choose what, if any, entertainment is provided.
- Guests don’t choose what food and wine are served.
- Guests don’t choose the portions of the dishes being served.
- Guests don’t choose the order in which the dishes and drinks are served,
- Guests don’t choose the order in which they will be served.
The host makes all of those decisions. Therefore, Epictetus is reminding us of the only thing within our power. As guests at the banquet of life, the only thing up to us is the choice to reach out and take a portion of each item as it is offered. Interestingly, even though the items served at a banquet are indifferents, Epictetus encourages us to reach out and take a portion of those items offered to us.
We are beginning to see why Epictetus chose an ancient banquet as a metaphor for this lesson—many of the circumstances and events in life are not in our power. Moreover, one of the essential aspects of Epictetus’ training program is understanding what is in our power and choosing only those things which are up to us.
Nevertheless, there is an interesting change in Epictetus’ training program in Encheiridion 15. Chapters one through fourteen directed our attention away from externals and toward that which is exclusively within our power—what is up to us. Now, Epictetus is providing us with a lesson about dealing with externals—what is not up to us. He encourages us to stretch out our hand and politely take a portion of preferred indifferents when they are offered to us. Epictetus said:
Something comes around to you; stretch out your hand and politely take a portion.
Epictetus is telling us it’s okay to reach out and take a portion of good health, wealth, a prestigious title, a high-paying job, a desirable mate, a big house, sports car, diamond jewelry, etc., when the cosmos offers them to us. This highlights an important aspect of Stoicism. Stoics were not complete ascetics like the Cynics—they did not renounce all externals. Stoic practice does not entail rejecting indifferents; however, it does require us to abandon our desire for them. The second lesson is a little more complicated. In Encheiridion 15, Epictetus offers a banquet metaphor to teach us how to handle indifferents. However, there’s another critically important part of this lesson.
Remember, the host decides almost everything that occurs at a banquet. Therefore, Epictetus reminds us that the only thing within your power—the only thing up to us—is the choice to reach out and take a portion of each item as it is offered. Again, Epictetus said:
Something comes around to you; stretch out your hand and politely take a portion. It passes on; don’t try to stop it. It has not come yet; don’t let your appetite run ahead, but wait till the portion reaches you.
Here is the critically important part of the lesson:
- Don’t reach out and attempt to take what is not offered to you by the host.
- Don’t let your desire for what is being offered to others distract you from the primary goal of the banquet, which is not simply to eat and drink.
Implicit in this metaphor is the idea we should not take a portion of any indifferent inconsistent with developing an excellent character.
Let’s see if a modern example will help. Imagine you’ve been invited to the wedding of a good friend and the reception afterward. When you arrive at the reception, you see name tags at each table, and you look for the one with your name on it, and you take a seat. You notice the families of the bride and groom are seated in places of honor near the stage. After the bride and groom have entered and been announced, servers begin entering the room with platters of food and trays of champagne. Naturally, they serve the families of the bride and groom first and then work their way back to your table. After the meal, the servers bring in platters with dessert. Each of the four servers has a different desert, and only one of them has chocolate cake.
You love chocolate cake, and this chocolate cake looks particularly delicious. Your table is close to the door where the servers enter the room, so you got a really good look at that cake. Your mouth starts to water in anticipation. However, you know you will not be among the first guests served. Your table is the eighth to be served. You could allow the impression of this cake as something “good” to well up and create a desire. Then, that desire might create an impulse to stop the server as he passes and take a piece of cake. However, that would be rude and entirely inappropriate.
This is an example of the first warning Epictetus offers in this lesson. The chocolate cake has not been offered to you yet; it is passing on. Epictetus warns us. “don’t try to stop it.” Okay, let’s say you passed that test. Somewhere in the sequence between the impression of the cake as a “good” and acting on the impulse to stop the server, you stopped the impression, accepted chocolate cake is just a preferred indifferent, and you remembered why you are at the wedding—to honor your friend on their wedding day.
You turn your attention back to the groom on the stage, telling everyone the story about how he met his bride. Occasionally, your attention is diverted from the groom’s story to the server with the chocolate cake. You just want to make sure some of that delicious-looking chocolate remains. It does, so your focus on the groom’s story again.
Then, you hear a guest at the table next to yours say, “This cake is otherworldly.” You turn your head in time to see him take a big bite of cake, and you watch as his body melts into his chair as the flavor overwhelms his senses with satisfaction. You look at the platter and realize there are only two pieces of cake left, and four people are seated between you and that cake. The impression of the cake as “good” suddenly resurfaces, and a desire for a slice wells up inside you. You don’t even hear the words of the groom any longer. Your attention is now focused exclusively on that cake as you hope a piece will be remain when the server arrives at your seat. In Epictetus’s words, you just made the mistake of letting your appetite run ahead.
Obviously, Epictetus was not giving his students a lesson on banquet etiquette. Instead, knowing his students were already familiar with banquet etiquette, he used it as a metaphor to teach them how to behave appropriately toward preferred indifferents. So, what would be appropriate in our chocolate cake scenario? Epictetus would say: keep your attention on the groom’s speech because the purpose of this banquet is to honor him on his wedding day. In other words, you are there for fellowship, not chocolate cake. If your attention remains on the purpose of the event and the platter of chocolate cake is offered to you, reach out and take a slice. However, don’t let the impression of that chocolate cake distract you from the event or create an impulse to act inappropriately.
Someone might ask: “Does this lesson mean I should abandon all ambition, accept my lot in life, and just wait for everything to be brought to me?” No, it doesn’t mean you should be passive or take a quietist approach to life. You are an active agent in the cosmos, and everything that happens in your life is co-fated to some degree by your actions. Stoicism doesn’t provide hardline rules for ethical behavior. Instead, it offers principles to guide us. The principle in this lesson is quite clear. We are encouraged to reach out and partake of preferred indifferents offered to us; however, we are simultaneously discouraged from letting our appetite for those externals run ahead.
Before I close, I will briefly address the last part of this passage, which reads:
And if you don’t even take things, when they are put before you, but pass them by, you will not only dine with the gods but also share their rule. It was by acting like that that Diogenes and Heracles and others like them were deservedly divine and called so.
Without going into details, this portion of Encheiridion 15 does not apply to the Stoic prokopton. Epictetus is referring to Cynics and others called to be God’s messengers. Those individuals must travel a different path that does require renunciation of externals. That’s a lesson for another episode.
As a Stoic prokopton, you are the only person who can determine if the cosmos is offering you something you can reach out and take. You alone can decide if you’re letting your appetite extend beyond your reach. Your life circumstances are unique to you. What lies within your reach may be out of reach for others. Likewise, that delicious chocolate cake that’s currently within the reach of the person at the table next to you is not within your reach. It may never be. The last piece may be taken before the server gets to you. Your choice may be between apple pie and tiramisu because that’s all that’s left. That’s not fair, someone may insist. To which, Epictetus would likely respond: what seems fair is often not up to us. However, our judgment about this event is within our power. We can choose to be angry at the cosmos and other people for our circumstances in life. Marcus Aurelius was considering his discontent when he wrote:
But perhaps you are discontented with what is allotted to you from the whole? Then call to mind the alternative, ‘either providence or atoms’ (Meditations 4.3)
What did Marcus mean? The cosmos is orderly—it has purpose and meaning—and your circumstances have meaning. In modern times, many people are psychologically disturbed and angry because they don’t have what they want and think they deserve. That anger is often intensified when others do have what they desire.
The hedonic treadmill is not new; however, modern advertising combined with ever-present social media have taken keeping up with the Jones to a new level. We are destroying our lives, families, societies, and environment with our all-consuming quest for an ever-increasing standard of living and quantity of possessions. We are allowing our appetites to run ahead, beyond our reach.
Here’s the Stoic answer for dissatisfaction. When you’re feeling discontented about your external circumstances, focus your attention on your inner character. When your thoughts and attitude about life events change, your experience of them will change. Keep the words of Marcus Aurelius close at hand for those times when events appear disturbing:
Everything suits me that suits your designs, O my universe. Nothing is too early or too late for me that is in your own good time. All is fruit for me that your seasons bring, O nature. (Meditations 4.23)
Reach out and take a portion of what is offered to you. Epictetus tells us if we behave like this toward preferred indifferents like our children, spouse, public positions, and wealth, we will be worthy one day to dine with the gods.
So, how should a Stoic prokopton act at times like this? Reach out and take a portion of those preferred indifferents the cosmos placed within your reach, but don’t allow your appetite to run ahead. That important distinction can change your life.
