In the Discourses we’re told that a philosopher, presumably not a Stoic, once grew so frustrated with his friends questioning his character that he screamed, “I can’t bear it, you’re killing me—you’ll turn me into him!,”25 pointing at Epictetus. That was a sudden display of histrionics: a blast of emotional rhetoric. Ironically, though, if he’d been more like Epictetus, he would have just stuck to the facts without getting worked up and said something like, “You criticized me; so be it.” In truth, nobody was killing this man and he could bear it.
