Discourses and Selected Writings
PENGUIN CLASSICS
DISCOURSES AND SELECTED WRITINGS
EPICTETUS (c. AD 55-135) was a teacher and Graeco-Roman philosopher. Originally a slave from Hierapolis in Anatolia (modern Turkey), he was owned for a time by a prominent freedman at the court of the emperor Nero. After gaining his freedom he moved to Nicopolis on the Adriatic coast of Greece and opened a school of philosophy there. His informal lectures (the Discourses) were transcribed and published by his student Arrian, who also composed a digest of Epictetus’ teaching known as the Manual (or Enchiridion). Late in life Epictetus retired from teaching, adopted an orphan child and lived out his remaining years in domestic obscurity. His thought owes most to Stoicism, but also reflects the influence of other philosophers, Plato and Socrates in particular. His influence has been deep and enduring, from Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations to the contemporary psychologist Albert Ellis, who has acknowledged his debt to Epictetus in devising the school of Rational-Emotive Behavioural Therapy.
ROBERT DOBBIN was born in New York City in 1958. He received a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1989, and taught history and classics at the college level for years. He is the author of Epictetus Discourses: Book One (Oxford, 1998), as well as articles on Virgil, Plato and Pythagoras. Currently he works as a book editor in northern California.
EPICTETUS
Discourses and
Selected Writings
Translated and edited by
ROBERT DOBBIN
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PENGUIN CLASSICS
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This translation first published in Penguin Classics 2008
1
Translation and editorial material copyright © Robert Dobbin, 2008
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978-0-14-191748-1978-0-14-191748-1
Contents
Introduction
Further Reading
Note on the Translation
THE DISCOURSES
FRAGMENTS
ENCHIRIDION
Glossary of Names
Notes
Introduction
At the beginning of the second century ad, in the reign of the emperor Trajan, a group of young men could be found studying philosophy at a boarding school in Nicopolis, a Roman colony in Epirus (north-west Greece). They were students of Epictetus. In a prefatory letter one such pupil, Arrian by name (c. AD 86-160), takes credit for committing a sizeable number of Epictetus’ lessons to print, thereby ensuring their survival. These are the Discourses. Arrian is also credited with preparing a digest of his master’s thought: the Manual or (in Greek) Enchiridion. A modest number of fragments attributed to Epictetus have also come down to us (some of them derived from Discourses otherwise lost, as only four books of the eight that Arrian originally published are extant).
Besides being an uncommonly diligent stenographer, Arrian was an author in his own right, best known for his biography of Alexander the Great. He was also a man of the world, a Roman consul and later legate to the Roman province of Cappadocia. Taking into account his own literary aspirations, and the formidable challenge posed by transcribing Epictetus’ lectures ‘live’, i.e. as they were being delivered, some have questioned whether his opening letter is completely trustworthy in characterizing the collection as nothing less than a verbatim record of what the philosopher said, inside and outside the classroom. Most students of the Discourses incline to the view that, in the process of effecting the transition of Epictetus’ lectures to print, Arrian probably permitted himself a few editorial changes. Establishing the dramatic context of the Discourses, in imitation of Plato’s Socratic dialogues, may be one of his contributions. But any alterations or ‘improvements’ he made to the text are unlikely to have been extensive. The books of history and geography that Arrian wrote later are so unlike the Discourses in style and content that, even if we did not have his word for it, we would be unlikely to conclude that they were products of the same hand. Arrian published his edition of the Discourses soon after Epictetus died, and an unauthorized edition had already been in circulation; so other of Epictetus’ students were in a position to judge how faithful Arrian was to the actual words of the master; and we have no record of anyone impugning their essential honesty. On the contrary, Arrian’s collection was accepted immediately as an authentic and definitive record of Epictetus’ thought, and even though Arrian was responsible for actually writing the book, Epictetus is conventionally, and rightly, treated as their author. Even if we cannot be sure that Epictetus actually said everything attributed to him in the Discourses, or in those exact words, we have no reason to doubt that the bulk of the material does derive from what Arrian and others heard while seated at the master’s feet.
BIOGRAPHY
Details of Epictetus’ life are sketchy; the Discourses themselves are our richest source of information. We can only make an educated guess as to the year he was born and the year he died, but are not likely to be far wrong in giving his dates as c.AD 55–135. We know that he was born into slavery because he tells us so, and from an ancient inscription we learn that his mother had been a slave. The place of his birth was Hierapolis, a major Graeco-Roman city in what today is south-western Turkey. The native language there was Greek – the Koine or ‘common’ Greek that derived from the language of classical Athens, but became widely disseminated in a simplified form during the Hellenistic era. The Discourses are a principal source for our knowledge of Koine Greek (as is the Greek New Testament, to cite another example).
More than once Epictetus refers to himself as ‘a lame old man’, but nowhere elaborates on the cause of his disability. Two traditions independent of the Discourses give competing accounts. Early Christian authors report that a sadistic master was responsible for rendering him crippled for life. But others interpret ‘lame old man’ as almost a pleonastic phrase, which is to say that he may have suffered from rheumatism or arthritis as a natural consequence of advancing age. The latter explanation is in fact the more likely. We know who his owner was; his name was Epaphroditus, and Epictetus makes mention of him several times, not exactly in complimentary terms, but not with any hint of bitterness either. Epaphroditus is famous for more than just being Epictetus’ master. A former sl
ave himself, after manumission he rose to the position of Nero’s secretary in charge of petitions; later he would serve Domitian in the same capacity. Descriptions of life at court frequently appear in the Discourses, in terms detailed and vivid enough to suggest that his service to Epaphroditus acquainted Epictetus at first hand with the manners, routines and attitudes of the emperor and his courtiers. We can go further and speculate that in this equivocal position – a slave on the one hand, but also a privileged member of the emperor’s inner circle – Epictetus came to appreciate in full the ambiguities of power, and learned to distinguish real freedom from counterfeit. This dialectic of freedom and slavery colours much of his presentation of Stoic thought.
That Epaphroditus allowed Epictetus considerable freedom of movement and association is implied by his attendance at the lectures of Musonius Rufus. Tacitus, a contemporary Roman historian (c.AD 56-c. 117), describes Musonius as the foremost Stoic of his day. We are fortunate that a sample of his lectures was included in an anthology of morally edifying readings, known as the Suda, which still survives. Musonius gives lessons in practical ethics, on particular questions such as whether women should be allowed to study philosophy, and what relationship ideally obtains between a husband and wife. While he does not engage the same topics, Epictetus in his Discourses displays a similar focus and orientation. Both men concentrate on ethics to the virtual exclusion of physics (cosmological speculation) and logic. Logic and physics feature in the Discourses, to be sure, but typically in an ancillary or illustrative role. And neither one gets caught up in ethical theorizing; they always treat ethics with a view to applying it in real life. Reading books and becoming fluent in the doctrines of philosophers are deprecated as ends in themselves. Even more than Musonius, Epictetus has a plain and practical agenda: he wants his students to make a clean break with received patterns of thinking and behaving, to reject popular morality and put conventional notions of good and bad behind them; in short, he aims to inspire in his readers something like a religious conversion, only not by appeal to any articles of faith or the promise of life in the hereafter (Stoics did not believe in the afterlife), but by appeal to reason alone.
Epaphroditus granted Epictetus his freedom – precisely when we don’t know – but from then on he devoted his life to the practice and preaching of philosophy. When Domitian, suspecting them of republican sympathies, in ad 95 ordered all the philosophers in Italy to pack up and leave, Epictetus turned this insult to account by moving to Greece and founding his school there (in a spot where he had probably little to fear in the way of competition). Nicopolis, the site he chose, was a Roman colony founded by the emperor Augustus to commemorate his victory over Antony and Cleopatra. It functioned as the de facto capital of the province of Epirus. The site had other advantages; it was on the Adriatic coast, making it easy of access for prospective students from Italy. The student body drew mainly from upper-class Roman families who admired Greek culture and were particularly keento taste of the accumulated wisdom of the Greek philosophers. We have no information as to how long students typically stayed at Nicopolis under Epictetus’ tutelage, but it was probably no more than a year or two. The school, in any case, was a success, and when its reputation attracted the attention of the emperor Hadrian (more kindly disposed toward philosophy than his predecessor), he honoured it, and its founder, with a personal visit.
Tradition has it that late in life Epictetus retired from teaching introduction and withdrew to the peace and quiet of family life, under conditions imposed by old age: that is, he became a parent by adopting rather than fathering a child, and took into his home a female servant to serve as a kind of surrogate mother to the child and domestic servant for himself. That he had absented himself from family life for so long shows that he regarded philosophy as a jealous mistress who demanded practically all his time and attention, which family life would not allow. That this renunciation of family life represented a real sacrifice is suggested by the fact that he took to it immediately upon retiring. He evidently thought he had earned the comforts of home after devoting most of his life to improving the lives of others – the successive generations of students who had passed through his school. We have no more news of Epictetus beyond this. After creating this version of a family he was evidently content to settle into it and live out the balance of his years in obscurity.
EPICTETUS AS AN EXPONENT
OF STOICISM
Stoicism was founded in the third century BC by Zeno of Citium; Cleanthes succeeded him as head of the school. But it was Cleanthes’ successor, Chrysippus (d. 208 BC), who contributed most to the development of Stoic doctrine and deserves most of the credit for what Stoicism eventually became – the dominant philosophy of the post-classical era. Tacitus furnishes a neat summary of the core principles of Stoic ethics as they were taught in Rome at the time:
Whether human affairs are directed by Fate’s unalterable necessity, or by chance, is a question. The wisest of philosophers disagree on this point. [Epicureans] insist that heaven is unconcerned with our birth and death – is unconcerned, in fact, with human beings generally – with the result that good people often suffer while wicked people thrive. [The Stoics] disagree, maintaining that although things happen according to fate, this depends not on the movement of the planets but on the principles and logic of natural causality. This school concedes to us the freedom to choose our own lives. Once the choice is made, however, the Stoics warn that the subsequent sequence of events cannot be altered. With regard to practical matters they maintain that popular ideas of good and bad are wrong: many people who appear to be in dire circumstances are actually happy provided they deal with their situation bravely; others, regardless of how many possessions they have, are miserable, because they do not know how to use the gifts of fortune wisely.1
‘The [Stoic] school leaves us free to choose our own lives.’ Confidence in this capacity is a key postulate of the Discourses. ‘Choice’ is one meaning ofprohairesis, a term that among Stoics is practically unique to Epictetus. According to him the faculty of choice distinguishes humans from irrational animals. We can make considered choices among ‘impressions’ or ‘appearances’, meaning anything that comes within range of our senses, together with whatever thoughts and feelings these sensations evoke. While all animals are subject to impressions, those of humans differ by virtue of the fact that we possess the power of language and reason (both faculties expressed by the single word logos).
Human impressions have ‘propositional content’, that is, our minds automatically frame them as a statement, such as ‘that is a good thing to have’ or ‘this is the right thing to do’. They also involve an intermediate step: the impression requires our ‘assent’ before it generates the impulse to act on it. Drawing on this orthodox Stoic account of human psychology, Epictetus makes two points with an emphasis distinctly his own: (1) that rational animals can hold off acting on impressions until they are scrutinized and assessed; and (2) if they are judged unreasonable – i.e. irrational or merely impractical – we can and should withhold our assent from them. ‘The gods have given us the best and most efficacious gift,’ he writes, ‘the ability to make good use of impressions’ (I 1, 7). And: ‘Don’t let the force of an impression when it first hits you knock you off your feet; just say to it, “Hold on a moment; let me see who you are and what you represent. Let me put you to the test”’ (II 18, 24). These functions of mind define the sphere of ‘choice’ (prohairesis), the upshot being that it is ‘up to us’ how we act, and that we are responsible for determining the character and content of our lives.
Compared to Epicureanism, which after its founder’s death was a closed system whose doctrines were literally engraved in stone (in the form of a lengthy inscription in Lycia composed by one Diogenes of Oenoanda), Stoicism throughout its long history remained a work in progress. It was not considered bad form for one Stoic to criticize another, or grounds for questioning whether one deserved to be considered a Stoic at all. Stoics
who parted company with Chrysippus on a fundamental point of doctrine used to be called unorthodox; but this is a judgement of modern scholars, not one we find the Stoics themselves making. Indeed, the Stoics’ openness to revision was a particular strength of their school.
In Epictetus you find not only fellow Stoics cited with approval; Plato is praised, Diogenes the Cynic is several times eulogized at length; but Socrates stalks these pages as the philosopher with the greatest moral authority of all. Now, it is true that Socrates was a figure universally admired; not only the Stoics, but Cynics, Sceptics and Epicureans recognized him as their foundational figure and did their best to show that their views were consistent or even identical with those Socrates supposedly held. Everyone, it seems, wanted a piece of him, and to the degree that these rival systems of thought succeeded in presenting themselves as Socratic in inspiration, their reputation with the public was enhanced. In no other Stoic, however – in no other writer from any of the various schools of philosophy – does Socrates figure more prominently than in Epictetus. He features as a philosophical saint and martyr, a model for the Stoic senators named in the first two Discourses who died for their principled opposition to Nero and Domitian; and, so far as his teaching is concerned, he is cited in support of key tenets of Stoic morality: that no one does wrong willingly; that harming another hurts the offender rather than the injured party; that material ‘goods’ can do as much harm as good, and should therefore be classified as value-neutral; and so forth.
The prominent role allotted to Socrates is part of a broader ecumenical programme, however. The Discourses do not just preach to the choir, they are directed as much at sceptics as true believers. By aligning himself with Socrates, and dropping the names of Plato, Diogenes, et al. along the way, Epictetus aims to transcend a narrow sectarian appeal and position Stoicism squarely within the philosophical mainstream. References to the Stoic ‘paradoxes’, those outre views that many found implausible or downright incoherent, are kept to a minimum. Above all Epictetus argues for his theses. Socrates et al. lend legitimacy to his positions, but are never cited to settle a question out of hand. Stoics emphasized rationality (the logos) as man’s characteristic quality, and it is by the use of rational argument that Epictetus intends to draw (and over the centuries has managed to gain) a wide and varied audience.