BOOK III. i. 16-20

...you will say this then, when you come to your senses, and you will know what kind of thing it is and who they are that practice it.

16 If you should reproach me for this later, what defense can I offer to the world? "Yes," you say, "but I will speak and he will not be persuaded." For did Laius obey Apollo? Did he not go away, get drunk, and bid farewell to the oracle? original: "chairein eipen tō chrēsmō"—a Greek idiom meaning to dismiss or disregard something. In Greek myth, King Laius of Thebes was warned by the oracle not to have a child, as that child would kill him. He ignored the warning, leading to the tragedy of Oedipus.

17 What then? Did Apollo, for that reason, fail to tell him the truths? And yet, while I do not know whether you will be persuaded by me or not, Apollo knew most perfectly 18 that he would not be persuaded, and yet he spoke. —"But why did he speak?" —Well, why is he Apollo? Why does he deliver oracles? Why has he stationed himself in this post, so as to be a prophet and a fountain of truth, and so that people from all over the inhabited world come to him? And why is Know Thyselforiginal: gnōthi sauton; the famous maxim inscribed on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi inscribed there, even though no one understands it?

19 Did Socrates persuade all those who approached him to care for themselves? Not even the thousandth part of them! But nevertheless, since he had been stationed in this rank by the divine spiritoriginal: daimonion; the internal sign or voice that Socrates claimed guided his actions, as he says himself, he never abandoned it. But what does he say even to his judges?

20 "If you release me," he says, "on these terms—that I no longer do these things which I now do—I will not endure it, nor will I desist. But I will approach everyone I meet, whether young or old, and simply always ask them these same questions I am asking now, and most of all I will ask you, my fellow citizens..." Epictetus is paraphrasing Socrates' speech from Plato's Apology (29c-30a), where Socrates defends his mission to provoke the Athenians into thinking about virtue.

¹ Who warned him not to beget a son, the ill-starred Oedipus.