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

whole life of philosophers,” says Cicero (Tusculan Disputations i 30), following Plato, “is a reflection upon death.” ↩

“Some English readers, too happy to comprehend how chains, torture, exile, and sudden executions can be ranked among the common accidents of life, may be surprised to find Epictetus so frequently endeavoring to prepare his hearers for them. But it must be recollected that he addressed himself to persons who lived under the Roman emperors, from whose tyranny the very best of men were perpetually liable to such kind of dangers.” —⁠Elizabeth Carter. All men even now are exposed to accidents and misfortunes against which there is no security, and even the most fortunate of men must die at last. The lessons of Epictetus may be as useful now as they were in his time. See book I chapter XXX. ↩

Epictetus refers to the rhetorical divisions of a speech. ↩

Xenophon (Memorabilia iv chapter 8, 4) has reported this saying of Socrates on the authority of Hermogenes. Compare the Apology of Xenophon near the beginning. ↩

Johann Schweighäuser says that he can extract no sense out of this passage. I leave it as it is. ↩

There is some difficulty here in the original. See Johann Schweighäuser’s note. ↩

The words may mean either what I have written in the text, or “and so he lost his suit.” ↩

“The meaning is, You must not ask for advice when you are come into a difficulty, but every man ought to have such principles as to be ready on all occasions to act as he ought; just as he who knows how to write can write any name which is proposed to him.” —⁠Hieronymus Wolf ↩

“The reader must know that these dissertations were spoken extempore, and that one thing after another would come into the thoughts of the speaker. So the reader will not be surprised that when the discourse is on the maintenance of firmness or freedom from perturbations, Epictetus should now speak of philosophical preparation, which is most efficient for the maintenance of firmness.” —⁠Hieronymus Wolf. See also Johann Schweighäuser’s note on section 21, “Suggest something me:” and book II chapter XXIV. ↩

In the Enchiridion or Manual (chapter 14) it is written, “Every man’s master is he who has the power to give to a man or take away that which he would have or not have: whoever then wishes to be free, let him neither seek anything or avoid anything which is in the power of others: if he does not act thus, he will be a slave.” ↩

Elizabeth Carter says “This is one of the many extravagant refinements of the philosophers; and might lead persons into very dangerous mistakes, if it was laid down as a maxim in ordinary life.” I think that Carter has not seen the meaning of Epictetus. The philosopher will discover the man’s character by trying him, as the assayer tries the silver by a test.

Cicero (De Legibus i 9) says that the face expresses the hidden character. Euripides (Medea 518) says better, that no mark is impressed on the body by which we can distinguish the good man from the bad. Shakespeare says

There’s no art
To find the mind’s destruction in the face.

—⁠Macbeth act i scene 4

↩

It is not clear what is meant by women being common by nature in any rational sense. Zeno and his school said (Diogenes Laërtius, Lives vii; Zeno, p. 195. London, 1664): “it is their opinion also that the women should be common among the wise, so that any man should use any woman, as Zeno says in his Polity, and Chrysippus in the book on Polity, and Diogenes the Cynic and Plato; and we shall love all the children equally like fathers, and the jealousy about adultery will be removed.” These wise men knew little about human nature, if they taught such doctrines. ↩

Archedemus was a Stoic philosopher of Tarsus. We know little about him. ↩

A man may be a philosopher or pretend to be; and at the same time he may be a beast. ↩

The materials (ὕλαι) on which man works are neither good nor bad, and so they are, as Epictetus names them, indifferent. But the use of things, or of material, is not indifferent. They may be used well or ill, conformably to nature or not. ↩

Terence says (Adelphi, iv 7):

Si illud, quod est maxime opus, jactu non cadit,
Illud quod cecidit forte, id arte ut corrigas.

“Dexterously” is “arte,” τεχνικῶς in Epictetus. —⁠John Upton ↩

The word is ἁρπαστόν, which was also used by the Romans. One threw the ball and the other caught it. Chrysippus used this simile of a ball in speaking of giving and receiving (Seneca, De Beneficiis, ii 17). Martial has the word (Epigrams iv 19) “Sive harpasta manu pulverulenta rapis”; and elsewhere. ↩

In Plato’s Apology chapter 15, Socrates addresses Meletus; and he says, it would be equally absurd if a man should believe that there are foals of horses and asses, and should not believe that there are horses and asses. But Socrates says nothing of mules, for the word mules in some texts of the Apology is manifestly wrong ↩

Compare Marcus Aurelius, Meditations ii 16, iii 11, vi 44, xii 36; and Seneca, De Otio chapter 31; and Cicero,