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From The Teaching of Epictetus: Being the ‘Encheiridion of Epictetus,’ with Selections from the ‘Dissertations’ and ‘Fragments,’ translated from the Greek, with Introduction and Notes, by T. W. Rolleston; Chicago; Donohue, Henneberry & Co; undated; pp. 249 to 274.

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The Teaching of Epictetus
translated from the Greek, with Introduction and Notes,
by T. W. Rolleston.
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249

NOTES.

1.  Professor Mahaffy, in his Greek Life and Thought, quotes the full text of this noble Hymn, which, he thinks, “would alone redeem the Hellenistic age, as it stands before us, from the charge of mere artificiality and pedantry.”

2.  ἰῆς  μίμημα  λαχόντες  μοῦνον. This is Zeller’s reading, but not Professor Mahaffy’s, who has ἑνὸς  μίμημα.


BOOK I.

1.  “Enter by the door” (cf. S. John, x. 1).  The parallelisms in thought and expression between Epitectus and the New Testament have often been noticed, and the reader will discover many others, to which I have not thought it necessary to draw attention.

2.  “Conceit:” οἴησις, Einbildung.

3.  “To be elated:” ἐπαίρεσθαι.  One might translate, “to be puffed up,” except that that expression is only used in a bad sense, and one may be “elated” in anything that is truly of the nature of the good. The Stoics distinguished between χαρά, joy, and ἡδονή, pleasure; not rejecting or despising the former.

1.  τὰ  μέν  εἰσιν  ἐφ’  ἡμῖν,   τὰ  δὲ  οὐκ  ἐφ’  ἡμῖν.  A fundamental distinction in the Epictetean system, which he 250 sometimes expresses by the phrases, τὰ  ἡμέτερα and τὰ  τῶν  ἄλλων — things that are our own and things that belong to others; or τὰ  ἴδια  and τὰ  ἀλλότρια — things that are our proper concern, and things that are alien to us.

2.  On the Mons Palatinus in Rome there stood a temple to Fever. Upton quotes from Gruter, p. xcvii., an interesting inscription to this divinity: Febri. Divæ. Febri. Sanctæ. Febri. Magnæ. Camilla. Amata. Pro. Filio. Male. Affecto. P.

1.  There is excellent MS. authority for this reading of the passage, which, however, is not Schweighäuser’s. The latter reads: “Be content with them, and pray to the Gods.”

2.  “Steward of the winds.”  A quotation from Homer, Od. x. 21.

1.  “Through not being dazzled,” etc.  Ἄν  τὰς  ὑλας  μὴ   θαυμάσῃ.

1.  Note that in this passage “God” and “the Gods” and “the Divine” are all synonymous terms.

2.  Or “of names.”

3.  Some texts add “such as Good or Evil.”

1.  Apparently a proverb, which may be paralleled in its present application by Luther’s “Pecca fortiter.”

[Elf.Ed. — Pecca fortiter means Sin boldly. Thanks to Bill Thayer for the very necessary translation.]

2.  A complex or conjunctive preposition is one which contains several assertions so united as to form a single statement which will be false if any one of its parts is 251 false — e.g., “Brutus was the lover and destroyer both of Cæsar and of his country.” The disjunctive is when alternative provisions are made, as “Pleasure is either good or bad, or neither good nor bad.”

3.  I have followed Lord Shaftesbury’s explanation of this passage, which the other commentators have given up as corrupt. It seems clear that whether the passage can stand exactly in the form in which we have it, or not, Lord Shaftesbury’s rendering represents what Epictetus originally conveyed.

4.  According to the usual reading, a scornful exclamation — “Thou exhort them!” I have followed the reading recommended by Schw. in his notes, although he does not adopt it in his text.

1.  The founder of the Cynic school was Antisthenes, who taught in the gymnasium named the Cynosarges, at Athens; whence the name of his school. Zeller takes this striking chapter to exhibit Epictetus’s “philosophisches Ideal,” the Cynic being the “wahrer Philosoph,” or perfect Stoic. (Phil. d. Gr. iii. S. 752.) This view seems to me no more true than that the missionary or monk is to be considered the ideal Christian. Epictetus takes pains to make it clear that the Cynic is a Stoic with a special and separate vocation, which all Stoics are by no means called upon to take up. Like Thoreau, that modern Stoic, when he went to live at Walden, the Cynic tries the extreme of abnegation in order to demonstrate practically that man has resources within himself which make him equal to any fate that circumstances can inflict.

2.  τριβώνιον, a coarse garment especially affected by the Cynics, as also by the early Christian ascetics.

3.  “Nor pity.”  Upton, in a note on Diss. i. 18. 3. (Schw.), refers to various passages in Epictetus where 252 pity and envy are mentioned together as though they were related emotions, and aptly quotes Virgil (Georg. ii. 499): — 

“Aut doluit miserans inopem, aut inividit habenti.”

It will be clear to any careful reader that when Epictetus asserts that certain emotions or acts are unworthy of a man, he constantly means the “man” to be understood as his highest spiritual faculty, his deepest sense of reason, his soul. That we are not to pity or grieve means that that side of us which is related to the divine and eternal is not to be affected by emotions produced by calamities in mere outward an material things. St. Augustine corroborates this view in an interesting passage bearing on the Stoic doctrine of pity (De. Civ. Dei. ix. 5; Schw. iv. 132).

“Misericordiam Cicero non dubitavit appellare virtutem, quam Stoicos inter vitia numerare non pudet, qui tamen, ut docuit liber Epicteti nobilissimi Stoici ex decretis Zenonis et Chrysippi, qui hujus sectæ primas partes habuerunt, hujuscemodi passiones in animum Sapientis admittunt, quem vitiis omnibus liberam esse volunt. Unde fit consequens, ut hæc ipsa non putent vitia, quando Sapienti sic accidunt, ut contra virtutem mentis rationemque nihil possunt.”

The particular utterances of Epictetus here alluded to by St. Augustine must have been contained in some of the lost books of the Dissertations, as nothing like them is to be found explicitly in those which survive, although the latter afford us abundant means for deducing the conclusion which St. Augustine affirms.

[Elf.Ed. — Marcus Dods, translation of the full chapter, with the passage above in italics:

5.  That the passions which assail the souls of Christians do not seduce them to vice, but exercise their virtue.

We need not at present give a careful and copious exposition of the doctrine of Scripture, the sum of Christian knowledge, regarding these passions. It subjects the mind itself to God, that He may rule and aid it, and the passions, again, to the mind, to moderate and bridle them, and turn them to righteous uses. In our ethics, we do not so much inquire whether a pious soul is angry, as why he is angry; not whether he is sad, but what is the cause of his sadness; not whether he fears, but what he fears. For I am not aware that any right thinking person would find fault with anger at a wrongdoer which seeks his amendment, or with sadness which intends relief to the suffering, or with fear lest one in danger be destroyed. The Stoics, indeed, are accustomed to condemn compassion. But how much more honourable had it been in that Stoic we have been telling of, had he been disturbed by compassion prompting him to relieve a fellow-creature, than to be disturbed by the fear of shipwreck! Far better, and more humane, and more consonant with pious sentiments, are the words of Cicero in praise of Caesar, when he says, “Among your virtues none is more admirable and agreeable than your compassion.” And what is compassion but a fellow-feeling for another’s misery, which prompts us to help him if we can? And this emotion is obedient to reason, when compassion is shown without violating right, as when the poor are relieved, or the penitent forgiven. Cicero, who knew - how to use language, did not hesitate to call this [compassion] a virtue, which the Stoics are not ashamed to reckon among the vices, although, as the book of that eminent Stoic, Epictetus, quoting the opinions of Zeno and Chrysippus, the founders of the school, has taught us, they admit that passions of this kind invade the soul of the wise man, whom they would have to be free from all vice. Whence it follows that these very passions are not judged by them to be vices, since they assail the wise man without forcing him to act against reason and virtue; and that, therefore, the opinion of the Peripatetics or Platonists and of the Stoics is one and the same. But, as Cicero says, mere logomachy is the bane of these pitiful Greeks, who thirst for contention rather than for truth. However, it may justly be asked, whether our subjection to these affections, even while we follow virtue, is a part of the infirmity of this life? For the holy angels feel no anger while they punish those whom the eternal law of God consigns to punishment, no fellowfeeling with misery while they relieve the miserable, no fear while they aid those who are in danger; and yet ordinary language ascribes to them also these mental emotions, because, though they have none of our weakness, their acts resemble the actions to which these emotions move us; and thus even God Himself is said in Scripture to be angry, and yet without any perturbation. For this word is used of the effect of His vengeance, not of the disturbing mental affection.

4.  This cake seems to form a ridiculous anti-climax. But it appears to have been a vexed question in antiquity whether an ascetic philosopher might indulge in this particular luxury (πλακοῦς). Upton quotes Lucian and Diogenes Läertius for instances of this question being propounded, and an affirmative answer given (in one instance by the Cynic, Diogenes). The youth in the text is being addressed by a novice who must not use the freedom of an adept.

253

5.  Upton quotes from Cymbeline: — 

“Hath Britain all the sun that shines? Day, night,
  Art they not, but in Britain? Prythee, think,
  There’s living out of Britain!”

But Epictetus means more than this in his allusion to sun and stars. — See Preface, xxiv. This passage would lead us to suppose that Epictetus believed in a personal existence continued for some time after death. In the end, however, even sun and stars shall vanish. — See ii. 13, 4.

6.  Being arrested by Philip’s people, and asked if he were a spy, Diogenes replied, “Certainly I am, O Philip; a spy of thine ill-counsel and folly, who for no necessity canst set thy life and kingdom on the chances of an hour.”

7.  According to Upton’s conjecture, these were gladiators famous for bodily strength; and also, one would suspect, for some remarkable calamity.

8.  This highly crude view of the Trojan war might have been refuted out of the mouth of Epictetus himself. Evil-doers are not to be allowed their way because they are unable to hurt our souls, but the hurt may be in the cowardice or sloth that will not punish them.

9.  By wearing his cloak half falling off, in negligent fashion. Nothing is finer or more characteristic in Epictetus than his angry scorn of the pseudo-Stoics of his day.

10.  ἀνάκρινον  τὸ  δαιμόνιον.  The allusion evidently is to the genius or divine spirit by which Socrates felt himself guided.

11.  Crates was a disciple of Diogenes. His wife was named Hipparchia. Upton quotes Menander (apud Diog. L.), “Thou wilt walk about with me in a cloak as once did his wife with Crates the Cynic.”

254

12.  Danaüs, father of the fifty Danaidæ. Æolus is mentioned in Od. x. as having six sons and six daughters.

13.  τραπεζῆας  πυλαωρούς.  Il. xxi. 69.

14.  That is, he capped the quotation by quoting the following line (Il. ii. 24, 25). Not a very striking intellectual effort; but Epictetus evidently considered it a meritorious thing to know Homer well enough to quote him in one’s sleep, and he was right.

15.  From a poem of Cleanthes.


BOOK II.

1.  Acording to the view of James Harris, in a long and valuable note communicated to Upton, the “master-argument” was so called from the supreme importance of the issues with which it dealt. On these issues different leaders of the Stoics took different sides, Diodorus holding both future and past things to be necessary, Cleanthes both contingent, and Chrysippus past things to be necessary and future contingent. Any two of the three propositions mentioned in the text exclude the third. For modern philosophy the distinction between the possible and the certain in the phenomenal world has, of course, no real existence; the possible being simply that of which we do not know whether it will come to pass or not.

2.  Of course Epictetus here speaks ironically; all this is just what it is the business of a thinker to do.

3.  Epictetus, I suppose, means to complain that the current phrases of philosophy are dealt out in glib answer to great ethical questions, just as Homer might be quoted for an event in the life of Odysseus, by persons who in neither case thing of gaining that vital conviction 255 which only the strenuous exercise of one’s own reason can produce. A little later he represents Hellanicus, the historian, as quoted on the distinction between good and evil, who never treated the subject. If it is to be a mere question of authority, one name is as good as another, since none is any use at all.

“Indifferent,” be it observed, is morally indifferent —  that which has in itself no bearing on our moral state. See Chap. II. 2.

4.  The followers of Aristotle called themselves Peripatetics.

1.  The word in the Greek is περιστάσεις, literally circumstances, but the word is evidently used in a bad sense, as equivalent to afflictions. Doom is likewise etymologically a neutral word, but one which has received an evil meaning.

2.  Socrates’ faith in his genius or “Dæmon” was well known. In this passage from his Apologia (which Epictetus gives from a bad text), it is doubtless the manner only that conveyed the idea of mockery. Neither Socrates nor any one else ever had better evidence of God’s existence than His voice in our conscience.

1.  Briefly, the three divisions seem to be Action, Character, and Judgment. The last is to be approached through training in logic, in the penetration of fallacies, etc., by which means a man is to arrive at such an inward and vital conviction of the truth that he can never for a moment be taken off his guard by the delusion of Appearance.

2.  Passions, passionless, τὰ πάθη,  ἀπαθής. — See Index of Philosophic Terms.

256

1.  Euripedes. — 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. But the Stoics taught that the arrival of this time might be indicated by some disaster or affliction which rendered a natural and wholesome life impossible. Self-destruction was in such cases permissible, and is recorded to have been adopted by several leaders of the Stoics, generally when old age had begun to render them a burden to their friends.

3.  Nay, thou shalt exist, etc. — This is the sense given by Zeller’s punctuation. Schweighäuser’s text would be rendered, “Thou shalt not exist, but something else will,” etc. Upton changes the text (on his own authority) by transposing an οὐκ.  “Thou shalt exist, but as something else, whereof the universe has now no need. .”  

4.  This does not appear to have been the law in Epictetus’s time, for he himself was educated while a slave. But it was a common provision in antique states.

5.  The ceremony in manumitting a slave.

[Elf.Ed. — Bill Thayer also tells me that this is the oldest of three ways to free a slave, called per vindictam. For a thorough discussion of the ways and means, see this section on the article on Manumissio, from Smith's Dictonary, on his site.]

1.  Chap. VI. i. is a passage from the lost Fifth Book of the Discourses, preserved for us in a rather obscure Latin translation by Aulus Gellius. During a storm at sea, a certain Stoic on board was observed by him to 257 look pale and anxious, though not indeed showing the signs of panic exhibited by the other passengers. Questioned afterwards by Gellius on the apparent feebleness in his professed faith, the Stoic produced the Fifth Book of Epictetus, and read this passage.

2.  The third Earl of Shaftesbury, an enthusiastic student of Epictetus, had this dish of water and ray of light engraved, and placed, with the inscription, πάντα  ὑπόληψις — All is Opinion — as an emblem at the front of his Characteristics. The passage, though interesting, is obscure. At one time the “appearances,” φαντασίαι, are compared to the ray of light; at another, the doctrines (literally “arts,” i. e., arts of life taught by philosophy) and virtues. Probably the explanation is to be found in the view of the Stoics that at birth the human soul is a tabula rasa, or blank sheet; all our knowledge coming from without; that is, from the “appearances” which surround us. Moral and philosophic convictions are thus, like all other mental states, the result of external impressions.

1.  The school of Plato was continued at Athens under the title of the Academy. In its later days it produced little except logical puzzles.

2.  “Friend, if indeed, escaping from this war, we were destined thereafter to an ageless and deathless life, then neither would I fight in the van nor set thee in the press of glorious battle. But now, since death in a thousand kinds, stands everywhere against us, which no man shall fly from nor elude, we go; either we shall give glory to another, or he to us.” — Sarpedon’s speech, Iliad, xii. 322-8.

3.  General consent. — The well-known philosophic doctrine, that what all men unite in believing must be true, which has so often been made the basis of arguments against Skepticism in various forms.

258

1.  See Chap. IV. i.

2.  He drew water by night for his garden, and studied philosophy in the day. — Diog. Laert. [Upton.]

3.  A most characteristic feature of the whole Stoic school was its treatment of ancient mythology and legend. These things were closely and earnestly studied, with a constant view to the deeper meanings that underlay the vesture of fable, an attitude which contrasts very favorably with Plato’s banishment of the poets from his Republic for “teaching false notions about the Gods.”

9.  Gyara, an island in the Ægean, used as a penal settlement.

1.  The captain . . . the driver — literally, “to him who has knowledge ” (of the given art).

2.  Liberator — καρπιστής.  The person appointed by law to carry out the ceremony of the manumission of slaves.

1.  This chapter seems to me to contain a truth expressed so baldly and crudely as to appear a falsehood. The reader’s mind will be fixed upon the truth or falsehood according as he is or is not capable of reading Epictetus with understanding.

2.  This earthen lamp was sold, according to Lucian, at the death of Epictetus for 3,000 drachmæ (about £ 120). — Adv. Indoct. 13.

259

1.  Parodying a verse of Euripedes on the stream of Dirce in Bœotia. The Marcian aqueduct brought water to Rome.

2.  I adopt Upton’s conjecture for the inexplicable ἐν  βοὸς  κοιλίᾳ.

1.  An eminent Cynic (also mentioned by Seneca and Tacitus).

1.  This is the reading of one of the Christian Paraphrases. The other versions add the words πρὸς  ἀλλήλους  after ἐξ  ὧν  οὐ  διαφερόμεθα, giving the sense “from things in which we do not differ from each other.” It is no uncommon thing for all the versions of Epictetus to unite in a manifestly corrupt reading, and though in this case the received text is not an impossible one, I have thought myself justified in following the variant of the Paraphrase.

1.  There is an allusion to this curious feature of the Olympic contests in the Fourth Idyll of Theocritis. Casaubon (Lect. Theocr. ad Idyll. 4) quoted by Schweighäuser, in his note on this passage (Diss. III. xv. 4), shows from Festus Pompeius that there was a statue in the Capitol of a youth bearing a spade after the manner of the Olympic combatants.

2.  Euphrates, a Stoic philosopher, and contemporary of Epictetus. He was tutor of Pliny, the younger.

3.  The pentathlos contended in five athletic exercises — viz., running, leaping, throwing the quoit, throwing the javelin, wrestling.

4.  Much of this must refer to the period of probation 260 or discipleship, for Epictetus is clear that the ordinary Stoic (who had not embraced the special mission of Cynicism) was not required to forsake his family, or his affairs, or his duties as a citizen, nor even justified in doing so.

BOOK III.

1.  The husk is, of course, the body. If it is maintained that Nature has made the ease of this our only proper pursuit, of course the altruistic, or social instincts have to be rejected and denied.

2.  The text is here almost certainly corrupt. It runs πῶς  οὖν  ὑπονοητικοί  ἑσμεν, οἶς  μὴ  φυσική  ἑστι  πρὸς  τὰ  ἔκγονα  φιλοστοργία. All the MSS. agree in ὑπονοητικοί, for which Schweighäuser desires to read προνοητικοί, and Wolf, ἔπι  κοινωνικοί. Salmasius declares emphatically for πῶς  οὖν  ἐπινοεῖς  ὅτι  κοινωνικοί  ἑσμεν, and this, with a slight alteration suggested to me by an eminent living scholar, is the reading I have adopted. Let us suppose that Epictetus said πῶς  οὖν  ὑπονοεῖς  ὄτι  κ.ε., and that this was written in the short lines common in Greek MSS.: — 

ΠΩΣΟΥΝΥΠΟ
ΝΟΕΙΣΟΤΙΚΟΙ
ΝΩΝΙΚΟΙ

The second line, beginning with the same letter as the third, might easily be dropped by a transcriber, and the next transcriber would certainly change the resulting ὑπονωνικοί to ὑπονοητικοί. The existing reading might give the sense, “How are we, then, suspicious of those (if any there be) to whom Nature has given no affection for their offspring?”

3.  Outward things — such as making provision for one’s family, serving the State, etc., — actions which are not directly concerned with our spiritual good.

261

1.  Phrygia, the birth-place of Epictetus, was one of the great centers of the wild and fearful cult of Cybele, whose priests gashed and mutilated themselves in the excitement of the orgie.

2.  Philosophy is brought upon the scene, speaking first through the mouth of a Stoic, afterwards through that of an Epicurean, and the practical results of each system are exhibited.

3.  The Athenians, rather than submit to Xerxes, abandoned their city to be plundered, and took to their fleet, the victory at Salamis rewarding their resolve.

Those who died at Thermopylæ were the three hundred Spartans under Leonidas, who held the pass against the Persian host till all were slain. Often as their heroism has been celebrated, perhaps nothing more worthy of their valor has been written than the truly laconic epitaph composed for them by Simonides:

“Stranger, the Spartans bade us die:
Go, tell them, thou, that here we lie.”

1.  The sense of human dignity was strong in Epictetus, and he would have it practically observed in men’s relations with each other. Compare Ch. v. 7. Zeller must have overlooked these Fragments of Epictetus when he asserted (p. 301) that no Stoic philosopher had ever condemned slavery. So far as we know, however, this is the only condemnation of that institution ever uttered by any Pagan thinker. The usual Stoic view was laid down by Chrysippus, who defined the slave very much as Carlyle does, as a “perpetuus mercenarius” — a man “hired for life, from whom work was to be required, a just return for it being accorded” (operam exegendam, justa præbenda). This utterance of Epictetus, as of one who knew slavery from within, and certainly was not inclined to exaggerate its discomforts, is noteworthy enough.

262

1.  Administrator, διορθωτής; in Latin, Corrector — a State officer of whom inscriptions, etc., make frequent mention, but of whose functions not much appears to be known beyond what the present chapter of Epictetus reveals.

2.  Cassiope was a port of Epirus, not far from Nicopolis, where Epictetus taught. Schw. conjectures that Maximus was sending his son to study philosophy at Nicopolis under Epictetus.

3.  “For a correct view of these matters will reduce every movement of preference and avoidance to health of body and tranquillity of soul; for this is the perfection of a happy life.” — Epicurus, Diog. Laert. x. 128. Epictetus’s analysis of the Epicurean theory amounts to this, that the pleasure of the soul is the chief good, but that it is only felt through the body and its conditions.

4.  The overseer of youth. — An officer in certain Greek cities. See Mahaffy’s Greek Life and Thought, ch. xvii., on the organization of the ephebi.

5.  Aid in works that are according to Nature. — The Greek is — ἐν  τοῖς  κατὰ  φύσιν  ἔργοις  παρακρατῆ. There is some difference of opinion among commentators as to the meaning of παρακρατῆ. Wolf translates, “hold the chief place” in natural works. Upton, Schw., and Long render it by “keep us constant,” “sustain us,” in such works. I do not see why we should not take the word in its plainest sense — that pleasure should act together with other forces in leading us to do well.

1.  Zealous for evil things. — Epictetus must mean things which they know to be evil — evil things as evil. It was a Socratic doctrine which we find again alluded to in this chapter, that no evil is ever willingly or wittingly done.

263

2.  A favorite theme of later Greek and of Roman comedy was the rivalship in love of a father and a son.

3.  Admetus, husband of Alcestis, being told by an oracle that his wife must die if no one offered himself in her stead, thought to lay the obligation on his father, as being an old man with but few more years to live. The first verse quoted is from the Alcestis of Euripides; the second is not found in any extant version of that play.

4.  Eteocles and Polyneices, sons of Œdipus, quarreled with each other about the inheritance of their father’s kingdom. Eteocles having gained possession of it, Polyneices brought up the famous seven kings, his allies, against Thebes, and fell in battle there by his brother’s hand, whom he also killed. The verses quoted are from the Phœnissæ of Euripides.

5.  Schweighäuser interprets this passage to mean that these men occupy the public places as wild beasts do the mountains, to prey on others. If we might read ὡς  τὰ  θηρία for ὡς τὰ  ὄρη, we should get a less obscure sense, “haunt the wilderness — I should say the public places — like wild beasts.” The passage is clearly corrupt somewhere.

6.  Polyneices bribed Eriphyle with the gift of this necklace to persuade her unwilling husband to march with him against Thebes where he died.

1.  The allusion is to Odyssey, v. 82-4. “But he was sitting on the beach and weeping, where he was wont; and tormented his spirit with tears and groanings and woes, and wept as he gazed over the barren sea.”

2.  Let him pity. — See Bk. I., ch. viii. note 3.

1.  The conflagration. — See Preface for an account of the Stoic Doctrine of the Weltverbrennung.

264

2.  Long suggests that the words translated “air to air” might be equally well rendered “spirit to spirit” (ὃσον  πνευματίου  εἰς  πνευμάτιον), thus finding a place for the soul in this enumeration of the elements of man. But this metaphysical division of man’s nature into a spiritual part and a material part would have been wholly contrary to Stoic teaching, which admitted no existence that was not material. As a matter of fact, if any of the terms in this enumeration is to be understood as meaning soul or spirit, it will be fire rather than air.

3.  Gods and Powers. — θεῶν  καὶ  δαιμόνων.

1.  To strangle lions or embrace statues. — Hercules did the former, and ostentatious philosophers sometimes did the latter in winter-time, by way of showing their power of endurance.

2.  The stamp of Nero. — I believe there is no other record than this of any rejection of Nero’s coins, and those which have come down to us are of perfectly good quality. He was declared a public enemy by the Senate, and possibly it was decreed at the same time that his coins should be withdrawn from circulation. Dion, quoted by Wise (apud Schweighäuser), reports that this was done in the case of Caligula, after the death of that tyrant.

3.  Lions at home, but in Ephesus foxes. — “A proverb about the Spartans, who were defeated in Asia,” notes the Scholiast on Aristoph. Pac., 1188-90.

BOOK IV.

1.  Nor can I move without thy knowledge. — From Homer, Il. x. 279, 280, Odysseus to Athene.

2.  The Genius of each man. — τὸν  ἑκάστου  Δαίμονα.

265

1.  A way wherein to walk. — Literally, the power of using a way. It seems to me likely that this term, way — ὁδός, here signifies the Stoic philosophy, just as in the early Church it was used to signify Christianity (e.g., Acts xxii. 4, and xix. 9, 23).

1.  Nor have any object in themselves. — Readers of Lotze will be reminded of the term Fürsichseinheit, used by him to denote the self-centered quality of true Being. The Greek here is οὐκ   αὐτὰ   προηγούμενα,  προηγούμενα, being the word used in Bk. I. viii. 13, and Bk. III. v. 5, for the leading objects or obligations of man.

2.  Would that I had you with me! — In Long’s translation the pronoun you is explained to mean God. I can see no reason for this interpretation. The words are, I think, supposed to be uttered by a disciple to his master: they are such as Epictetus may have heard from many of his own disciples as they left him to take their part in the world of action.

3.  Cautious assent — i. e., caution in allowing oneself to entertain the impressions of appearances.

1.  The strong and growing yearning for some direct, personal revelation of God, some supernatural manifestation of His existence and care for men, is noted by Zeller as a special trait of Hellenistic times. Such a revelation must have been longed for by many as the only satisfying answer to the destructive logic of the Pyrrhonists, and men’s minds were also of course led that way by the insistence of the Stoic thinkers upon the communion of the individual with God, as the most important of all possible relations. Hence the growth of many wild and orgiastic cults at this epoch — all 266 based on the state of ecstasy connected with their rites, which was ascribed to supernatural influence. With the Stoics this movement took the comparatively sober shape of attention to the established system of oracular divination. Zeller, however, shows that some Stoics were disposed to rationalize the revelations of the oracles by supposing a certain sympathy between the mind of the seer and the future events which led to the unconscious selection of means of divination which would exhibit the proper signs. — (Z. 339, 340.) Epictetus evidently thought more of God’s revelation in the conscience than any other.

2.  The story is told by Simplicius in his commentary on this chapter. Two friends, journeying together to inquire of the oracle at Delphi, were set upon by robbers; one of them resisted, and was murdered, the other either fled or made no effort on his companion’s behalf. Arriving at the temple of Apollo, he was greeted with the following deliverance of the oracle: — 

“Thou saw’st thy friend all undefended die —
  Foul with that sin, from Phœbus’ temple fly.”

BOOK V.

1.  Simplicius explains that the oath was to be refused, because to call God to witness in any merely personal and earthly interest implies a want of reverence towards Him; but that if there were a question of pledging one’s faith on behalf of friends, or parents, or country, it was not improper to add the confirmation of an oath.

2.  Upton quotes allusions to these recitations from Juvenal, Martial, and Pliny. Authors would read their own works and invite crowds of flatterers to attend. Epict. Diss. iii. 23. (Schweighäuser) is a scornful diatribe against the pretentious people who held forth 267 on these occasions, and the people who assembled to hear and applaud them. He contrasts with fashionable reciters and lecturers his own master, Rufus. “Rufus was wont to say, I speak to no purpose, if ye have time to praise me. And, verily, he spoke in such a way that every man who sat there thought that some one had accused him to Rufus, he so handled all that was going on, he so set before each man’s eyes his faults.”

3.  Into vulgarity — εἰς  ἰδιωτισμόν.

1.  The sophism, or puzzle, called the Liar, ran thus: — A liar says he lies: if it is true, he is no liar; and if he lies, he is speaking truth. The Quiescent (ὁ  ἡσυχάζων) was an invention attributed by Cicero to Chrysippus (Acad. ii. 29). When asked of a gradually-increasing number of things to say when they ceased to be few and became many, he was wont to cease replying, or be “quiescent,” shortly before the limit was reached — a device which we have some difficulty in regarding as a fair example of Chrysippus’s contributions to the science of logic. For the master sophism see B. II. chap. i., note 1.

2.  Plato, Laws., ix.: — “When any of such opinions visit thee, go to the purifying sacrifices, go and pray in the temples of the protecting Gods, go to the society of men whom thou hast heard of as good; and now hear from others, now say for thine own part, that it behooves every man to hold in regard the things that are honorable and righteous. But from the company of evil men, fly without a look behind. And if in doing these things thy disease give ground, well; but if not, hold death the better choice, and depart from life.”

3.  The true athlete. — Literally, ascetic, ἀσκητής; i. e., practicer.

4.  The Dioscuri, or Twins, Castor and Pollux, were the patron deities of sailors.

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1.  If viewed disjunctively. — That is, if we say, It is day, or, It is night. This is a difficult chapter, and full of corruptions. The feast alluded to is, doubtless, the feast of life, where the Gods are the hosts.

1.  Winter training. — Such as the Roman troops underwent in winter-quarters. They were accustomed to exercise themselves with arms of double the normal weight, and prepare themselves by marching, running, leaping, etc., for active service.

1.  The Pancratium was a contest in which boxing and wrestling were both allowable. For the Pentahlon, see Bk. II. Chap. xvii., note 3.)

1.  This means, apparently, that the judgment has no right to do more than endorse the deliverances of the perceptive faculty. If a man commits any error, he does it under the conviction that it is in some way for his profit or satisfaction; that is, that there is something of the nature of the Good in it. He may be mistaken in this; but so long αs he does noτ know where Good and Evil really lie, he can do no other than he does. The true course, then, for the philosopher is not to condemn him for his actions, but to show him the fundamental error from which they proceed. The expression, “assent,” συγκατατίθεσθαι, is that used by Epictetus in II. vi., etc., where he speaks of the mind as being imposed on, or taken captive, by the outward shows of things.

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1.  The Greek is Ἐπειδὴ  λόγη   ἐστὶν  ὁ  διαρθρῶν   καὶ  ἐξεργαζόμενος  τὰ  λοιπά.    διαθρόω means, literally, to fashion with joints, hence constitute organically, with interdependence of parts. Long translates “analyze.”

2.  Modius. — A measure of about two gallons.

3.  Antisthenes, about 400 B. C., founder of the Cynic school, which was established by him in the gymnasium called the Cynosarges (hence the name). As a Cynic, his authority would, of course, be respected by the hearers of Epictetus. This investigation of terms, or names, is, indeed, the beginning of philosophy and the guide to truth in any sphere, but perhaps not every one is competent to undertake it. There must be a real and not merely a formal appreciation of the contents of each term. A primrose is one thing to Peter Bell and another to Wordsworth. The term, let us say, Duty, is one thing to a Herbert Spencer and another to a Kant.

1.  “My friends fly all culture,” is an injunction reported of Epicurus (Diog. L. x. 6). However, neglect of form in literary style was a characteristic of philosophic writers of the Hellenistic period, which was by no means confined to the Epicureans.

2.  This passage is corrupt. I follow the reading adopted by Schweighäuser (after Wolf); but it may be noted that Schweighäuser’s translation follows another reading than that which he adopts in his text, viz. — κινουμένου (being moved), instead of τεινομένου (being strained). The original, in all versions is γινομένου, which makes no sense at all. — See Preface, xxiii.

3.  The writings enumerated are, of course, works of Epicurus. When dying, he wrote in a letter to a friend (Diog. L. x. 22) that he was spending a happy day, and his last.

270

4.  Stoic ἀπάθεια was anything but insensibility. Chrysippus held that may things in the Kosmos were created for their beauty alone. — Zeller, 171.

5.  There is another short chapter on the arts of ratiocination and expression (I. viii. Schw.), which glances at the subject from a somewhat different point of view from that taken in the chapter which I have given. There Epictetus dwells chiefly on the danger that weak spirits should lose themselves in the fascination of these arts: “For, in general, in every faculty acquired by the uninstructed and feeble there is danger lest they be elated and puffed up through it. For how could one contrive to persuade a young man who excels in such things that he must not be an appendage to them, but make them an appendage to him?”

1.  The first of these quotations is from the Stoic Cleanthes, the second from a lost play of Euripedes; in the third Epictetus has joined together two sayings of Socrates, one from the Crito and one from the Apologia. Anytus and Meletus were the principal accusers of Socrates in the trial which ended in his sentence to death.


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