The Teaching of Epictetus

Epictetus

Language:

English

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Complete work

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Recorded or compiled by others

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Clean text

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~62,500 words · 297 passages

The name Epictetus is pronounced _ep''ik-ti'tus--e_ as in _get_, first _i_ as in _habit_, second _i_ as in _police_, _u_ as in _but_. TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK, WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES, BY T. W. ROLLESTON. NEW YORK HOME BOOK COMPANY, 45 VESEY STREET. INTRODUCTION. But for the zeal and ability of one disciple we should not now possess any trustworthy account of the teaching of Epictetus. For, like not a few other sages, he wrote nothing--his teaching was purely oral, delivered, in the form of lectures or discourses, to the students who came to him to receive their education in philosophy. One of these students was Flavius Arrianus, afterwards Senator and Consul of Rome, named by Lucian "one among the first of Roman men," and known to us chiefly as author of the best history of Alexander the Great which was produced in antiquity. That history is still extant, but posterity owes Arrian still more abundant thanks for the copious notes of the teaching of Epictetus which he took down from his master's lips in Nicopolis. This record he afterwards published in eight books (whereof only four now remain), entitled the _Dissertations of Epictetus_; and out of these he drew the materials for compiling the little work, the _Encheiridion_, or Manual, of Epictetus, by which this philosopher has hitherto been most generally known.[1] It is clear that the _Dissertations_ were not regarded by Arrian as a satisfactory representation of the teaching of his master; that he published them, indeed, with much reluctance, and only when it appeared that unless he did so, certain imperfect versions of his records would be established as the sole sources of authoritative information about Epictetus. These circumstances are explained in a dedicatory letter to his frien

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