Discourses by Epictetus (good books to read for beginners txt) 📕

man will use the powers which he has, and will not need advice and direction from other men, who professing that they are wise and that they can teach, prove by their teaching and often by their example that they are not wise, and are incapable of teaching.

This is equally true for those who may deny or doubt about the existence of God. They cannot deny that man has the intellectual powers which he does possess; and they are certainly not the persons who will proclaim their own want of these powers. If man has them and can exercise them, the fact is sufficient; and we need not dispute about the source of these powers which are in man Naturally, that is, according to the constitution of his Nature. ↩

See the end of the preceding chapter. John Upton compares Horace’s “Incidere ludum” (Epistles i 14, 36). Compare also book II chapter XVI at 37. ↩

A festival at Rome in December, a season of jollity and license (Livy, History of Rome xxii 1). Compare the passage in Tacitus, The Annals xiii 15, in which Nero is chosen by lot to be king: and Seneca, De Constantia Sapientis chapter 12, “Illi (pueri) inter ipsos magistratus gerunt, et praetextam fascesque ac tribunal imitantur.” ↩

Gyarus or Gyara a wretched island in the Aegean sea, to which criminals were sent under the empire at Rome. Juvenal, Satires i 73. ↩

See Johann Schweighäuser’s note. ↩

Demetrius was a Cynic philosopher, of whom Seneca (De Beneficiis vii 1) says: “He was in my opinion a great man, even if he is compared with the greatest.” One of his sayings was; “You gain more by possessing a few precepts of philosophy, if you have them ready and use them, than by learning many if you have them not at hand.” Seneca often mentions Demetrius. The saying in the text is also attributed to Anaxagoras (Lives by Diogenes Laërtius) and to Socrates by Xenophon (Apologia, 27). ↩

At Rome, and probably in other towns, there were seats reserved for the different classes of men at the public spectacles. ↩

See Johann Schweighäuser’s note. ↩

Paradoxes (παράδοξα), “things contrary to opinion,” are contrasted with paralogies (παράλογα), “things contrary to reason” (book IV chapter I at 173). Cicero says (Prooemium to his Paradoxes), that paradoxes are “something which cause surprise and contradict common opinion;” and in another place he says that the Romans gave the name of “admirabilia” to the Stoic paradoxes.⁠—The puncture of the eye is the operation for cataract. ↩

ἐπὶ τῆς θεωρίας. “Intelligere quid verum rectumque sit, prius est et facilius. Id vero exsequi et observare, posterius et difficilius.”⁠—Hieronymus Wolf.

This is a profound and useful remark of Epictetus. General principles are most easily understood and accepted. The difficulty is in the application of them. What is more easy, for example, than to understand general principles of law which are true and good? But in practice cases are presented to us which as Francis Bacon says, are “immersed in matter;” and it is this matter which makes the difficulty of applying the principles, and requires the ability and study of an experienced man. It is easy, and it is right, to teach the young the general principles of the rules of life; but the difficulty of applying them is that in which the young and the old too often fail. So if you ask whether virtue can be taught, the answer is that the rules for a virtuous life can be delivered; but the application of the rules is the difficulty, as teachers of religion and morality know well, if they are fit to teach. If they do not know this truth, they are neither fit to teach the rules, nor to lead the way to the practice of them by the only method which is possible; and this method is by their own example, assisted by the example of those who direct the education of youth, and of those with whom young persons live. ↩

“Such an intention” appears to mean “the intention of learning.” “The son alone can say this to his father, when the son studies philosophy for the purpose of living a good life, and not for the purpose of display.” —⁠Hieronymus Wolf ↩

I have followed Schweihaeuser’s explanation of this difficult passage, and I have accepted his emendation ἐκσείοντα, in place of the manuscripts, reading ἐκεῖ ὄντα. ↩

This was a large sum. He is speaking of drachmae, or of the Roman equivalents denarii. In Roman language the amount would be briefly expressed by “sexagies centena millia H. S.,” or simply by “sexagies.” ↩

See Johann Schweighäuser’s note; and all his notes on this chapter, which is rather difficult. ↩

See book II chapter XI. ↩

Seneca, De Tranquillitate Animi, chapter 9, says: “What is the use of countless books and libraries, when the owner scarcely reads in his whole life the tables of contents? The number only confuses a learner, does not instruct him. It is much better to give yourself up to a few authors than to wander through many.” ↩

See Plato’s Apology, chapter 28; and Marcus Aurelius, Meditations iii 5. ↩

Pyrrho was a native of Elis, in the Peloponnesus. He is said to have accompanied Alexander the Great in his Asiatic expedition (Diogenes Laërtius, Lives ix 61). The time