Epictetus · Fragments
Fragment 22
From Agrippinus28
When Agrippinus was governor,29 he used to try to persuade the persons whom he sentenced that it was proper for them to be sentenced. "For," he would say, "it is not as an enemy or as a brigand that I record my vote against them, but as a curator and guardian; just as also the physician encourages the man upon whom he is operating, and persuades him to submit to the operation."
Epictetus, Discourses, Fragment 22, translated by W. A. Oldfather (1925–1928). The Stoic Library.