It is better for men, as far as possible, to put stiff-necked pride from their minds and to avoid boldness, to strip themselves bare and to surrender themselves to reason. For no one is free;
we all are slaves of fate and if we follow her voluntarily, we will live undisturbed and without grief as a whole,
having trained our minds to be confident. If someone adopts a false cast of mind and attributes the possibility of acting to himself, he will be refuted by the impossibility of his acting and will be a laughing-stock. Then he will remember these words of the tragic Euripides:
Lead me, O Zeus, and you, O Fate,
Wherever you have assigned me to go.
I will follow even if I hesitate. If I did not wish,
Having become base, I will suffer this anyway.
—Vettius Valens, Anthologies, Book V, trans. M. Riley
