Epictetus

Life and writing

Epictetus taught Stoic philosophy after gaining freedom from slavery. He later established a school at Nicopolis. His account of ethical life asks people to examine the judgments through which they respond to events, while taking their responsibilities toward others seriously. The surviving teaching has a practical setting: a student must learn to use an idea in conduct, rather than merely repeat it.

Arrian preserved the Discourses associated with Epictetus’s teaching. The Enchiridion condenses that material into a shorter handbook, so a brief instruction can lose some of the reasoning supplied by the longer discussions. The linked reading edition uses Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s English translation. It is related reading; it does not establish the translation or exact wording of every anthology passage on this page.

Reading this voice

Begin with the selected passages about judgment and gradual growth, then read an entire numbered section of the handbook. Ask what response the passage invites and what responsibilities remain. Life years stay uncertain here: the reference places his birth in the 50s CE and death around 135, rather than giving two exact years. The archive’s circa-60 coordinate comes from its anthology, not a date of composition. The linked translation and anthology wording can differ.

Subjects to explore

Words to begin with

• To a reasonable creature, that alone is insupportable which is unreasonable; but everything reasonable may be supported.
• In a word, neither death, nor exile, nor pain, nor anything of this kind is the real cause of our doing or not doing any action, but our inward opinions and principles.
• No great thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.