Epictetus

(1). This philosopher was born at Hierapolis in Phrygia. Afterwards we findhim . a slave at Rome; his master was Epaphroditus, one of the courtiers of Nero. He obtained his liberty, but when or how is uncertain. In the reign of Domitian, all the philosophers were banished from Rome; and Epictetus retired to Nicopolis, a city of Epirus. There he discoursed on morals; and one among his hearers, Arrian, preserved notes of his lectures, which have come down to our own time. He is reported to have returned to Rome in the reign of Adrian, and to have enjoyed the friendship of that emperor Some even say that he lived into the reign of M. Antoninus, but this seems very unlikely. That emperor was however a great admirer of his works. The stories told about him evince at once his excessive poverty (at any rate as far as the early part of his life is concerned) and the resignation and sweetness of his aes i In

his old age he saved the child of one of his friends, that would otherwise have been exposed to perish ; the nurse whom he procured for this child was, it appears, the first servant he had ever had.

Epictetus lived strictly according to his philosophy ; and hence his writings have that vital power which can be attained by no other means. They have indeed the characteristic marks of Stoicism; and among those marks there may perhaps be found in them the defect, that they treat the desires which men commonly experience in the course of their life too much as aberrations to be subjugated and put down, This character does of course belong to some desires, but not to all, nor to the greater part. Again, Epictetus is perhaps liable to the charge that as he depreciates too much the desires, so he exalts too much the power of the will; he thinks it far more capable of governing the desires than, by itself, it can be.