Discourses, Volume 2Epictetus ('Acquired', probably his real name) was a crippled Greek slave of Phrygia during Nero's reign (A.D.54-68) who heard lectures by the Stoic Musonius before he was freed. Expelled with other philosophers by the emperor Domitian in 89 or 92 he settled permanently in Nicopolis in Epirus and, in a school which he called 'healing place for sick souls', taught a practical philosophy, details of which were taken down by his pupil Flavius Arrianus and survive in four books of 'Diatribae' or Discourses and a smaller 'Encheiridon' or Handbook which gives brifly the chief doctrines of the other work. He lived apparently into the reign of Hadrian (A.D. 117-138). Epictetus was a teacher and preacher of practical Stoic ethics, broad and firm in method, sublime in thought, and now humorous, now sad or severe in spirit. How should one live righteously? Our god-given will is our paramount possession, and we must not covet others'. We must not resist fortune. Man is part of a system of men and God; men are reasoning beings (in feeble bodies) and must conform to God's mind and the will of nature. Epictetus presents us also with a pungent picture of the perfect (Stoic) man. |
