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C LIBRARY^ I UNIVERSITYOF CALIFORNIA II SAN HEGO . \^-7r Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/discrsepictetusOOepiciala THE FATES From a painting by Paul Thumann Discourses of Epictetus Translated by George Long With a Critical and Biographical Introduction by John Lancaster Spalding Illustrated New York D. Appleton and Company 1904 Copyright, 1900, By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. EPICTETUS OF the life of Epictetus little need be said. His biography is his character, and this lies open in his books, where the fine spirit of an earnest and noble soul still breathes. He was born in Phrygia, about the middle of the first century. His mother was a slave; his father is unknown. Epictetus is not his name, but is a Greek word which denotes his servile condition. In his youth he became the property of Epaphroditus, a freed- man of Nero's, who permitted him to attend the lectures of Musonius Rufus, one of the most celebrated teachers in Rome. Having acquired freedom, he began himself to give lessons; but he was soon sent into exile, together with the other philosophers, by the Emperor Domitian. Settling at Nicopolis, in Epirus (the modern Albania), he opened a school, and continued to teach the doctrines of stoicism to the time of his death, at the age, it is sup- posed, of nearly a hundred years. He was feeble in body, lame, poor, and unmarried, living alone until he took an old woman into his house to care for an orphan whom he had adopted. He wrote nothing, but talked with his pupils in a familiar way of whatever concerns the conduct of life. Arrian, his favourite disciple, took notes of his conversations, not with a view to publication, but for his own use. When, however, without his knowledge, they had fallen into the hands of several, he edited them him- EPICTETUS iv self. Thus we owe to an accident the existence of these " Discourses," which form one of the world's vital books. The " Manual " is a collection of aphorisms taken sub- stantially from the larger work. Epictetus was not the founder of a new philosophy. Zeno, the originator of the Stoic system, was his master, and Zeno himself derived his fundamental principles from Antisthenes, the author of the cynic school and the friend of Socrates. The Greeks are the creators of philosophy, and their earliest attempt at systematic thought was an effort to understand Nature. But they soon learned that it was necessary to begin from within, since to know3nything man must first know himself. Thus the problem of the conduct of life forced itself upon them. This is the con- stant preoccupation of Socrates, who was born five hundred years before Epictetus. He taught that the good is" to be sought not in outward things, nor in the indulgence of appetite, but in virtue, which for him, however, is an intellectual rather than a moral habit. His calm and ra- tional temper led him to the belief that man always acts in accordance with his knowledge, does what insight shows him to be useful to himself. He who does evil, does it from a mistake of judgment. Sin is error. Virtue, then, being chiefly knowledge, may be taught, and to teach it is the philosopher's life work. But Socrates moved in a circle from which there was no escape. To knowthe useful is virtue. But what is the useful? That which makes for virtue. Antisthenes does not attempt to determine the mean- ing of the good. He simply declares that virtue is the only good, and, in his view, virtue is the intelligent conduct of life. Right life is the essential good; virtue is its own reward, and one need not look to its results. It is, in the midst of whatever vicissitudes, a sure possession. The virtuous man is independent of events, and stands