Never Complain

Rome, in the first century. A master is twisting the leg of his slave. The slave does not scream. Smiling, he says: "You will break my leg." The bone breaks. "Did I not tell you that you would break it?" The slave was Epictetus, and his words reached an emperor. This video is about his silence: five rules for the man who has decided to stop complaining. Not to make you numb. To make you strong. Topics covered: The slave and the leg | Who Epictetus was | The man who blames his share (Theophrastus, Seneca) | 1. Draw the line | 2. Fix it or drop it: Marcus Aurelius and the bitter cucumber, Paconius Agrippinus | 3. Tell your trouble once | 4. Catch the first murmur: John Milton | 5. Count the days | The trap: complaint is not protest (Helvidius Priscus) | Be not ashamed to be helped | Never complain SOURCES Origen, Against Celsus 7.53 (trans. Frederick Crombie) · Epictetus, Discourses 1.1, 1.2, 1.16, 2.18 and Enchiridion 1 and 33 (trans. George Long) · Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 1.7, 1.15, 7.7, 8.50 (trans. George Long, 1862) · Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 96 (trans. Richard M. Gummere) · Theophrastus, Characters 17 · John Milton, "When I consider how my light is spent" (1673) · Tacitus, Annals 16 · Suetonius, Vespasian 15 · Cassius Dio 66–67 · Historia Augusta, Hadrian 16 · A. A. Long, Epictetus: A Stoic and Socratic Guide to Life (2002) ARTWORK Public-domain works by Jusepe de Ribera, Georges de La Tour, Rembrandt, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Jacques Callot, Léon de Laborde, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Raphael, Gerrit Dou, Claude Lorrain, J. M. W. Turner, Carl Rottmann, Pietro Santi Bartoli, Adriaen Brouwer, Matthias Stom, Jan Steen, Quinten Metsys, Hubert Robert, Gustave Boulanger, Carl Gustav Carus, Jacob van Ruisdael, William Hogarth, Gerard ter Borch, Honoré Daumier, Jan Lievens, Benjamin West, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Gerard van Honthorst, Sebastiano Ricci, Vincent van Gogh, Jules Breton, Juan Sánchez Cotán, Viktor Vasnetsov, Jozef Israëls, Cesare Maccari, John William Waterhouse, Giovanni Paolo Panini, Richard Wilson, Meindert Hobbema, Johannes Vermeer, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Gustave Courbet, El Greco, Adriaen van Ostade, John Everett Millais, David Teniers the Younger, Ferdinand Bol, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Jean-François Millet, Hieronymus Bosch, Nicolaes Maes, Thomas Cole, Léon Lhermitte, Pieter van der Heyden, Carel Fabritius, Caspar David Friedrich, Carl Spitzweg, Philippe de Champaigne, Moritz von Schwind, Angelica Kauffman, Giotto, Théodore Géricault, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Anthony van Dyck, Ilya Repin, Ivan Aivazovsky, William Blake, Vilhelm Hammershøi, Louis Le Nain, John Martin, Pieter Claesz, Jack Leigh Wardleworth after Mihály Munkácsy, William Faithorne, Michael Burghers, Francisco Goya, Lovis Corinth, Herman van der Mijn, Domenico Fetti, Bartolomeo Pinelli, Jacopo Amigoni, Henry Fuseli, Francisco de Zurbarán, Pieter Christoffel Wonder, Joseph Wright of Derby, Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, Lodovico Pogliaghi, Federico Barocci, Ludolf Backhuysen and others, via Wikimedia Commons, the Rijksmuseum, the National Gallery of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rembrandt or Gerrit Dou, The Parable of the Hidden Treasure: CC BY-SA 3.0. Domenico Fetti, Melancholy (photo): Jean-Pol Grandmont, CC BY 4.0. Adriaen van Ostade, Peasants in a Tavern: Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, CC BY-SA 4.0. MUSIC Original score by Flumera. #philosophy #stoicism #epictetus