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. 35 to 38.
[I give under this head only those terms the exact force of which may not be apparent to the reader in a mere translation.]
Αἰδήμων. — Pious, reverent, modest. The substantive is αἰδώς, the German Ehrfurcht. (Wilhelm Meister, Wanderjahre, Bk. II. ch. ii.), a virtue in high regard with Epictetus, who generally mentions it in connection with that of “faithfulness,” πίστις. In Wordsworth’s poem, “My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky,” the “natural piety” which he prays may abide with him in his old age seems to be just that moral sensitiveness or αἰδώς which passes into reverence and worship in the presence of certain things, and into shame and dread in that of others.
Ἀπάθεια. — Peace — that is, peace from passion, πάθη. Πάθος was any affection of the mind causing joy or grief. As it appears from Bk II. iii. 1., ἀπάθεια is not, in Epictetus, the state of absolute freedom from these passions, but that of being able to master them so that they shall not overwhelm the inner man.
Διαρθωτικός. — That which organizes, constitutes organically, forms into a system. From ἄρθρον, a joint. The word “analyze,” by which Long translates διαρθροῦν, seems to me wanting in the formative sense expressed by the original.
δόγμα. — An opinion, that which seems (δοκεῖν) true; generally in the special sense of a philosophic dogma.
272Εὐροεῖν. — To prosper; literally, to flow freely, εὔροια, prosperity. A common Stoic phrase for a happy life.
Εὐσέβεια. — Religion, piety. σέβομαι — “to feel awe or fear before God and man, especially when about to do something disgraceful” (Liddell and Scott); to worship, respect, reverence.
Ἡγεμονικόν (τό). — The Ruling Faculty — that in a man which chooses, determines, takes cognizance of good and evil, and sways the inferior faculties (δυνάμεις, powers) to its will. Lotze notes this hegemonic quality in the human soul as that which distinguishes it from the bundle of sensations into which the Association Philosophy would resolve it.
θαυμαζειν. — To admire, be dazzled with admiration by, to worship, to be taken up with a thing so as to lose the power of cool judgment. A frequent word in Epictetus, the sense of which is precisely rendered in Hor. Sat. i. 4, 28, “Hunc capit argenti splendor, stupet Albius ære.”
Ἰδιώτης. — One of the vulgar, an unlettered person; in Epictetus, one uninstructed in philosophy. Originally the word meant one who remained in private life, not filling any public office, or taking part in State affairs. A man might be an ἰδιώτης, or “layman,’ with respect to any branch of science or art.
καλὸς καὶ ἀγαθός. — The good and wise man — literally, beautiful and good. A standing phrase to denote the perfection of the human character. Καλός is a word sometimes difficult to render. Curtius connects it etymologically with Sanscrit, kalyas; Gothic, hails = healthy.
Οἴνσις. — “Conceit” — defined by Cicero as “Opinatio” — intellectual self-sufficiency, the supposing one’s self to know something when one does not. “The first 273 Business of a philosopher,” says Epictetus, “is to cast away οἴησις, for it is impossible that one can begin to learn the things that he thinks he knows” (Diss. II. xvii. 1). He is not, in short, to be “wise in his own conceit.”
ὄρεξις, ἔκκλισις, ὁρμή, ἀφορμή. — Pursuit, avoidance, desire, aversion. According to Simplicius (Comment. Ench. i.), ὄρεξις and ἔκκλισις were used by the Stoics to express the counterparts in outward action of the mental affections, ὁρμή and ἀφορμή, and were regarded as consequent upon the latter.
προαίρεσις. — The Will; but as used in Epictetus, this word implies much more than the mere faculty of volition. Literally, it means a choosing of one thing before another; in Epictetus, the power of deliberately resolving or purposing, the exercise of the reflective faculty being implied. It is hardly to be distinguished from τὸ ἡγεμονικόν, q. v..
προλήψεις. — “Natural conceptions.” See Preface, xxviii., xxix. The “primary truths” of Lord Herbert of Cherbury.
Συγκατατίθεσθαι. — To assent to or acquiesce in anything, to ratify by the judgment the emotions produced by external things or events, such as the sense of dread, or pleasure, or reprobation, which they arouse in us. To be on one’s guard against the hasty yielding of this assent is one of Epictetus’s main injunctions to the aspirant in philosophy.
Ταράσσεσθαι. — To be troubled; ἀ-ταραξία, tranquillity. Ταράσσειν is primarily to stir up, confuse, throw into disorder.
φαντασία. — An appearance; with the Stoics, any mental impression as received by the perceptive faculty before the Reason has pronounced upon it, a bare perception.
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