A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus with the Encheiridion
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Selection or partial work
- Authorship:
- Recorded or compiled by others
- Condition of the text:
- Clean text
- Extent:
- ~58,500 words · 278 passages
Cite this work
- APAEpictetus. (n.d.). A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus with the Encheiridion. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/epictetus/a-selection-from-the-discourses-of-epictetus-with-the-encheiridion
- MLAEpictetus. "A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus with the Encheiridion." SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/epictetus/a-selection-from-the-discourses-of-epictetus-with-the-encheiridion.
- ChicagoEpictetus. A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus with the Encheiridion. SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/epictetus/a-selection-from-the-discourses-of-epictetus-with-the-encheiridion.
What it is about
A selection from the Discourses with the Encheiridion.
Context and history
The Encheiridion is the pocket manual Arrian extracted from the Discourses so it could be carried about. Marcus Aurelius read it, and so did the early Christian monks, who copied it out with the names of the gods changed. **Warning: a selection, not the complete Discourses.**
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Very little is known of the life of Epictetus. It is said that he was a native of Hierapolis in Phrygia, a town between the Maeander and a branch of the Maeander named the Lycus. Hierapolis is mentioned in the epistle of Paul to the people of Colossae (Coloss. iv., 13); from which it has been concluded that there was a Christian church in Hierapolis in the time of the apostle. The date of the birth of Epictetus is unknown. The only recorded fact of his early life is that he was a slave in Rome, and his master was Epaphroditus, a profligate freedman of the Emperor Nero. There is a story that the master broke his slave’s leg by torturing him; but it is better to trust to the evidence of Simplicius, the commentator on the Encheiridion, or Manual, who says that Epictetus was weak in body and lame from an early age. It is not said how he became a slave; but it has been asserted in modern times that the parents sold the child. I have not, however, found any authority for this statement. It may be supposed that the young slave showed intelligence, for his master sent or permitted him to attend the lectures of C. Musonius Rufus, an eminent Stoic philosopher. It may seem strange that such a master should have wished to have his slave made into a philosopher; but Garnier, the author of a “Mémoire sur les Ouvrages d’Epictète,” explains this matter very well in a communication to Schweighaeuser. Garnier says: “Epictetus, born at Hierapolis of Phrygia of poor parents, was indebted apparently for the advantages of a good education to the whim, which was common at the end of the Republic and under the first emperors, among the great of Rome to reckon among their numerous slaves grammarians, poets, rhetoricians, and philosophers, i
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