Epictetus

Epictetus was born around 50 CE at Hierapolis in Phrygia, in present-day Turkey, and was a slave in Rome. His owner, Epaphroditus, was a freedman in the service of the emperor Nero. Epictetus studied with the Stoic Musonius Rufus, was freed, and taught philosophy in Rome. He was lame, by some accounts from ill-treatment and by others from illness.

When the emperor Domitian expelled the philosophers from Rome, around 93 CE, Epictetus moved to Nicopolis in western Greece, where he opened a school and taught until his death, around 135. His students came from all over the empire.

Like Socrates, he wrote nothing. His pupil Arrian, later a historian and governor, recorded his lectures in the Discourses, of which four books survive, and summarized his teaching in the short Handbook (Encheiridion). Marcus Aurelius read his words, and the Handbook was adapted for use by Christian monks. Epictetus’s teaching is direct and demanding: his students are told again and again to distinguish what is in their power from what is not, and to examine their judgments.

He often speaks of God, of providence and of the divine reason that each person shares, and his tone is at times close to prayer. The philosopher, as he describes him, is a witness to the divine order, content with his place in it, and free whatever his outward condition.