" I am Zeus the Puppet Master" (Sections 30 to end)

I remember asking myself in the analysis of the sections sixteen to thirty about who was the play-writer, about who was the force that plotted out every person’s life? So, because of this question I had, I kept on reading and found that in section 31 the gods were mentioned. “The most important aspect of piety toward the gods…” (Epictetus sec 31). After reading this small phrase I began to wonder about which gods they were referring to, and, due to the time period where Socrates and Epictetus were alive, I concluded that the gods they were referring to were the Greek gods of the Olympus. Now, if we continue to read what follows the phrase from section 31, a clear reflection of a philosopher in Greece during that time period is given to the reader:

The most important aspect of piety toward the gods is certainly both to have correct beliefs about them, as beings that arrange the universe well and justly, and to set yourself to obey them and acquiesce in everything that happens and to follow it willingly, as something brought to completion by the best judgment. (Epictetus sec. 31).

In this small excerpt, I saw as a reader the fear that the people of Greece had toward the Gods in that time. The excerpt clearly says that you have to willingly obey everything that the gods demand. This shows fear of punishment by the gods if they are refused by a powerless human being such as a philosopher, or a non-philosopher. I also saw, how religion should fit every doctrine or theory that was devised during that era.

Speaking of a philosopher and a non-philosopher, Epictetus strangely stratifies the society in which he lived in as philosopher or non-philosopher. “The position and character of a non-philosopher: he never looks for benefit or harm to come from himself but from things outside. The position and character of a philosopher: he looks for all benefit and harm to come from himself.” (Epictetus sec 48). Epictetus here suggests that being a philosopher was one of the highest statuses you could get in his society, due to the fact that he compares through his handbook the non-philosophers, and the philosophers, where, obviously, the philosopher has always better traits than the non-philosopher.

Finally I must say that since the life of a Stoic is plotted by the gods and written in the cosmos, then really the gods have all the power, which makes me end this analysis in accordance with my friend and classmate, Juan Mauricio Venegas, where stoicism is summarize in this sentence,

Well, Crito, if it is pleasing to the gods this way, then let it happen this way. (Epictetus sec. 53).