Epictetus

“ By the gods, young man, may such not be your fate! But once you have heard these words go away and say to yourself, "It was not Epictetus who said these things to me; why, how could they have occurred to him? but it was some kindly god or other speaking through him. For it would not have occurred to Epictetus to say these things, because he is not in the habit of speaking to anyone. Come then, let us obey God, that we rest not under His wrath." Nay, but if a raven gives you a sign by his croaking, it is not the raven that gives the sign, but God through the raven ”

“ Epictetus, a celebrated Stoic philosopher of the 1st century, originally a slave; lived and taught at Rome, but after the expulsion of the philosophers retired to Nicopolis, in Epirus; was lame, and lived in poverty; his conversations were collected by Arrian, and his philosophy in a short manual under the Greek name of “Enchiridion of Epictetus,” written, as is alleged, in utter obliviousness of the fact that “the end of man is an action, not a thought.”
Epicureans, a sect of philosophers who derived their name from Epicurus, and who divided the empire of philosophy with the Stoics (q. v.) ”

“ Epictetus asked what the reason was for the trip to the Capital, and the man proceeded to ask what opinion he had about the matter. If you ask me what you are going to do in Rome, says Epictetus, whether you will succeed or fail, I have no precept to offer. If, however, you ask how you are going to fare, I have this to say: If you have sound judgements, you will fare well; if unsound judgements, ill; since in every case the way a man fares is determined by his judgement. ”

“ I felt vaguely then (and now as a Christian I know) that men have need not only to look within, but also (and much more) to look up—up to the Father in heaven with the aid of His Spirit on earth. It was due to Epictetus that at this time I—however faintly—began to feel this need.
Epictetus seemed to have no consistent view either of the unity of God or of the possibility of plural Gods. In Rome, we have three altars to the Goddess Febris, or Fever. Epictetus once referred to Febris in the reply of a philosopher to a tyrant. The latter says, “I have power to cut off your head” ”

“ Go into one of their synagogues and you may hear their priest—or rather prophet, for priests they have none—thundering and lightening as though he held the thunderbolts of Zeus. Order the fellow off for scourging or execution, and he straightway becomes serenity itself. Not Epictetus could be more serene. Indeed, where an Epictetian would ‘make himself a stone’ under stripes and say, ‘They are nothing to me,’ a Christian would rejoice to bear them ‘for the sake of Christus.’ And even Epictetus, I think, could not reach the warmth, the glow, of their affection for each other. ”

“ As for Epictetus I do not believe that any man, not excepting Jesus himself, was more austere, more firm, more equitable, or more moral. I say nothing but what is easy to prove, and not to pass my prescribed limit I will not mention all the exemplary acts of his life, but give one single example of constancy which puts to shame the weakness and cowardice of Jesus in the sight of death. Being a slave to a freeman named Epaphroditus, captain of the guards of Nero, it took the fancy of this brute to twist the leg of Epictetus. ”

“ It reminded me of a sentence I had found in one of my new volumes, entitled “Proverbs,” “The light of the Lord is as the breath of men; He searcheth the storehouses of the soul.”
Somewhat similar was a saying imputed to Epictetus—which I had not heard from Arrian but from a fellow-student—reproving one of his disciples in these words, “Man, where are you putting it? See whether the basin is dirty!” The disciple, though an industrious scholar, was of impure life; and Epictetus meant that, if the vessel of his soul was foul, all the knowledge put into that vessel would also become foul. ”

“ When one of his acquaintances, who seemed to have an inclination to take up the calling of a Cynic, asked him what sort of a man the Cynic ought to be, and what was the fundamental conception of his calling, Epictetus said: We will consider it at leisure; but I can tell you this much, that the man who lays his hand to so great a matter as this without God, is hateful to Him, and his wish means nothing else than disgracing himself in public. For in a well-ordered house no one comes along and says to himself, "I ought to be manager of this house" ”

“ But Epictetus is particularly in earnest about warning us that to profess these principles and talk about them is one thing--to act up to them quite another. He draws a humorous picture of an inconsistent and unreal philosopher, who--after eloquently proving that nothing is good but what pertains to virtue, and nothing evil but what pertains to vice, and that all other things are indifferent--goes to sea. ”

“ Capps, however, thinks the meaning of Epictetus to be that a king qua king, that is, while really holding the sceptre of Zeus, is blessed of fortune. If "unfortunate" he is simply not such a king. This refinement would be similar to the well-known argument concerning the "ruler qua ruler," in the first book of Plato's Republic. The more common-sense view of the case is well expressed by the Scholiast on Homer's Odyssey XI. 438, thus: "A king is unfortunate when his subjects fare ill." ”

“ Euripides.—Musonius Rufus, the teacher of Epictetus, is reported to have said, “Take the chance of dying nobly when thou canst, lest after a little death indeed come to thee, but a noble death no more.”
2. This phrase of the “open door” occurs frequently in Epictetus, usually when, as here, he is telling the average non-philosophic man that it is unmanly to complain of a life which he can at any time relinquish. The philosopher has no need of such exhortation, for he does not complain, and as for death, is content to wait God’s time. ”

“ I am Thine; I crave exemption from nothing that seems good in Thy sight; where Thou wilt, lead me; in what raiment Thou wilt, clothe me. Wouldst Thou have me to hold office, or remain in private life; to remain here or go into exile; to be poor or be rich? I will defend all these Thy acts before men; I will show what the true nature of each thing is." Nay, you will not; sit rather in the house as girls do [8] [† 2] and wait for your mammy until she feeds you! If Heracles had sat about at home, what would he have amounted to? He would have been Eurystheus [9] and no Heracles. ”

“ Under these conditions it was evident that the teaching of Epictetus could never win half the influence which its essential qualities fitted it to exercise. And accordingly, as another and better vehicle for this influence, Arrian compiled and condensed from the Dissertations the small handbook of the Stoic philosophy known as the Encheiridion of Epictetus. This little work has made Epictetus known to very many whom the Dissertations would never have reached. ”

“ In the year 94 a. d. the emperor Domitian issued a decree expelling all philosophers from Rome—an easily explainable proceeding on his part if there were any large number of them who, in the words of Epictetus, were able “to look tyrants steadily in the face.” Epictetus must have by this time obtained his freedom and set up for himself as a professor of philosophy, for we find him, in consequence of this decree, betaking himself to Nicopolis, a city of Epirus. Here he lived and taught to a venerable age, and here he delivered the discourses which Arrian has reported for us. ”

“ For the greatness of Reason is not measured by length or height, but by the resolves of the mind. Place then thy happiness in that wherein thou art equal to the Gods.
XXXIV
Asked how a man might eat acceptably to the Gods, Epictetus replied:—If when he eats, he can be just, cheerful, equable, temperate, and orderly, can he not thus eat acceptably to the Gods? But when you call for warm water, and your slave does not answer, or when he answers brings it lukewarm, or is not even found to be in the house at all, then not to be vexed nor burst with anger, is not that acceptable to the Gods? ”

“ What does philosophy profess?
When someone consulted Epictetus as to how he could persuade his brother to cease being angry with him, he replied, Philosophy does not profess to secure for man any external possession. ”

“ It is said that Epaphroditus treated him with much cruelty, and on one occasion even broke his leg, perhaps to see whether his philosophic slave was making satisfactory progress in Stoicism under C. Musonius Rufus. But this story rests on no good authority, and is probably a mere legend which grew up to account for the undoubted fact that Epictetus was in some way crippled or deformed. Simplicius tells us he was so from an early age. He never married ”

“ The Christians think of their champion, Christus, as having devoted himself to death for their sake, and then as having been miraculously raised from the dead, and as, even now, present among them whenever they choose to meet together and ‘sing hymns to him as to a God.’ Epictetus absolutely disbelieves this. Hence, he is at a great disadvantage—I mean, of course, as a preacher, not as a philosopher. The Christians have their God, standing in the midst of their daily assemblies, before whom they can ‘corybantize’—to repeat your expression—to their hearts’ content. ”

“ What hast thou to do with us? With sheep hast thou some concern, for that they serve us when they are shorn, and when they are milked, and at last when they have their throats cut. Were it not, then, to be desired, if men could be lulled and charmed to slumber by the Stoics, and give themselves to thee and the like of thee, to be shorn and milked? These things shouldst thou say to thy brother Epicureans; but shouldst thou not keep them hidden from other men, and seek in every way to persuade them above all things that we are by nature social, and that temperance is good ”

“ And thus you will neither yourself be kindled into unseemly passion, nor will you in a fit of fury do harm to any one else." No doubt Epictetus is here describing conduct which he had often seen, and of which he had himself experienced the degradation. But he had early acquired a loftiness of soul and an insight into truth which enabled him to distinguish the substance from the shadow, to separate the realities of life from its accidents, and so to turn his very misfortunes into fresh means of attaining to moral nobility. ”

“ And we must note that when Epictetus speaks of certain things as good or bad or indifferent, he is generally speaking of them in their relation to the spiritual man, and in the most absolute and unconditional sense. No evil can happen to the essential part of man, to that side of him which is related to the eternal and divine, without his own will. Hence the death of a beloved friend, or child, or wife, is no evil; and if it be no evil, we are forbidden to grieve for it, or, in the most usual phrase with Epictetus, we are not to be troubled or confounded by it, ταράσσεσθαι. ”

“ The Enchiridion, which was also arranged by Arrian, is a brief summary of the basic ideas of Stoic philosophy and an introduction to the techniques required to transform Stoic philosophy into a way of life.
Thus we do not have any original writings of Epictetus. Like G. H. Mead in recent times, he was completely dedicated to the human and intellectual problems of his students. He left it for them to preserve what they considered to be the lasting message of the teacher. In contrast to Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus had no subjective approach to the Stoic doctrines. ”

“ Late in life Epictetus increased his establishment by taking in an old woman as a servant. The cause of his doing so shows an almost Christian tenderness of character. According to the hideous custom of infanticide which prevailed in the pagan world, a man with whom Epictetus was acquainted exposed his infant son to perish. Epictetus in pity took the child home to save its life, and the services of a female were necessary to supply its wants. ”

“ Here Epictetus—after some customary technicalities—turned to us like a showman, to explain the royal puppet’s condition: “‘How neglected?’ you ask. He does not know the essence of the Good for which he has been created by nature, nor the essence of evil. He cries out, ‘Woe is me, the Greeks are in peril’ because he has not learned to distinguish what is really his own etc. etc.” After this apostrophe, which I have condensed, he resumed the dialogue:
“Ag. They are all dead men. The Trojans will exterminate them. ”

“ Arrian walked on for a while without answering. Presently he said, “This is your first lecture. It is not so with me. I, as you know, have heard Epictetus for several months, and I admire him as much as you do, perhaps more. I am sure he is doing me good. But I do not aim at being his ideal Cynic. ‘In me is not the stuff’—I admit his censure—that makes a man into a King, bearing all the cares of all mankind upon his shoulders. ”

“ Epictetus, who had been sold as an infant from his cradle in Hierapolis, and whom we have heard talking to Titus and Britannicus in the days when he was the little slave of Epaphroditus, lived to bequeath to the world the legacy of thoughts purer and sweeter than any which we have received from classical antiquity, with the exception of those uttered by Marcus Aurelius, that ‘bright consummate flower’ of pagan morality. Those thoughts seem to absorb and to reflect the auroral glow of ChristianityT19 and could never have been attained by a Pagan if Christianity had not been in the air. ”

“ Ἰδιώτης originally meant simply a private citizen, one who took no part in the government of the State. Epictetus uses it somewhat in the sense of 'layman,' one who is of the world, not of the philosophic guild; the distinction being that the ἱδιώτης looks for happiness, not in the things of the soul, but in relations with the external world established by means of the senses. On this distinction I venture to found my translation of the word. ↑ εὐσέβεια is the Greek word which I have translated by 'religion' in this chapter. ”