Against a Person Who Had Once Been Detected in Adultery explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Social Duty and Friendship

  Epictetus emphasizes that fidelity is essential for maintaining neighborhood, friendship, and community, and that adultery destroys these bonds.

• Rationality and Self-Examination

  The discourse calls for self-examination of one's role and worth, comparing a faithless person to a useless utensil that cannot fulfill its proper function.

Characters to notice

• Epictetus

  Speaker of the discourse, arguing against adultery and for fidelity as the essence of humanity.

• Archedemus

  Mentioned as a philosopher whose works the adulterer claims to understand, yet still acts faithlessly.

• Socrates

  Referenced ironically as the model of a guest at a feast, contrasting with the adulterer's behavior.

Key passages

• “As Epictetus was saying that man is formed for fidelity, and that he who subverts fidelity subverts the peculiar characteristic of men, there entered one of those who are considered to be men of letters, who had once been detected in adultery in the city.”

  Epictetus was teaching that humans are made for trustworthiness, and undermining trust destroys what makes us human, when a man known as a scholar who had been caught committing adultery walked in.

  Sets the scene for the discourse, highlighting the contradiction between the man's learning and his actions.

• “But if we lay aside this fidelity for which we are formed and make designs against our neighbour’s wife, what are we doing? What else but destroying and overthrowing? Whom, the man of fidelity, the man of modesty, the man of sanctity.”

  If we abandon the trust we were made for and plot against our neighbor's wife, we are destroying the very qualities of fidelity, modesty, and sanctity in ourselves.

  Epictetus argues that adultery is self-destructive, not just a violation of others.

• “So if you were an utensil so worthless that a man could not use you, you would be pitched out on the dung heaps, and no man would pick you up. But if being a man you are unable to fill any place which befits a man, what shall we do with you?”

  If you were a tool too broken to use, you'd be thrown onto the trash heap. But as a person who cannot fulfill any proper human role, what can we possibly do with you?

  Epictetus uses the metaphor of a useless utensil to illustrate the social and moral worthlessness of a faithless person.

• “It is just as if the wasps complained because no man cares for them, but all fly from them, and if a man can, he strikes them and knocks them down. You have such a sting that you throw into trouble and pain any man that you wound with it.”

  It's like wasps complaining that no one likes them—everyone avoids them and tries to swat them. Your sting is the harm you cause, making people suffer from your actions.

  Epictetus compares the adulterer to a wasp, whose only effect is to cause pain, leading others to avoid or destroy it.

• “In this way women also are common by nature. When then the legislator, like the master of a feast, has distributed them, will you not also look for your own portion and not filch and handle what belongs to another.”

  Women are common by nature, just like food at a feast. But once the host (the legislator) has assigned portions, you should take your own and not steal from someone else's plate.

  Epictetus uses the analogy of a feast to argue that while women may be naturally common, social laws have distributed them, and taking another's portion is theft.