Discourses by Epictetus (good books to read for beginners txt) 📕

σὺ, καὶ οἱ ἁλτῆρες, see John Upton’s note. It is also a Latin form: “Epicurus hoc viderit,” Cicero, Academica ii chapter 7; “haec fortuna viderit,” Epistulae ad Atticum vi 4. It occurs in Marcus Aurelius, Meditations viii 41, v 25; and in Acts 18:15. ↩

μεταρριπίζεσθαι. Compare James 1:6: ὁ γὰρ διακρινόμενος ἔοικε κλύδωνι θαλάσσης ἀνεμιζομένῳ καὶ ῥιπιζομένῳ. ↩

This is said in the Crito of Plato, 1; but not in exactly the same way. ↩

So kings and such personages speak in the Greek tragedies. Compare what Marcus Aurelius (Meditations xi 6) says of Tragedy. ↩

ἀνεστάκασιν. See the note of Johann Schweighäuser on the use of this form of the verb. ↩

See Lecture V, “The New Academy,” Thomas Woodhouse Levin’s Six Lectures Introductory to the Philosophical Writings of Cicero, Cambridge, 1871. ↩

ἀπαχθείς. See the note in Johann Schweighäuser’s edition. ↩

Compare Cicero, Academica Priora ii 6. ↩

Goethe has a short poem, entitled “Gleich und Gleich” (Like and Like):

Ein Blumenglöckchen
Vom Boden hervor
War früh gesprosset
In lieblichem Flor;
Da kam ein Bienchen
Und naschte fein:⁠—
Die miissen wohl beyde
Für einander seyn.

↩

See Johann Schweighäuser’s note. I have given the sense of the passage, I think. ↩

Cicero, De Officiis i chapter 4, on the difference between man and beast. ↩

See Johann Schweighäuser’s note, tom. ii p. 84. ↩

The original is αὐτοῦ, which I refer to God; but it may be ambiguous. Johann Schweighäuser refers it to man, and explains it to mean that man should be a spectator of himself, according to the maxim, Γνῶθι σεαυτόν. It is true that man can in a manner contemplate himself and his faculties as well as external objects; and as every man can be an object to every other man, so a man may be an object to himself when he examines his faculties and reflects on his own acts. Schweighäuser asks how can a man be a spectator of God, except so far as he is a spectator of God’s works? It is not enough; he says, to reply that God and the universe, whom and which man contemplates, are the same thing to the Stoics; for Epictetus always distinguishes God the maker and governor of the universe from the universe itself. But here lies the difficulty. The universe is an all-comprehensive term: it is all that we can in any way perceive and conceive as existing; and it may therefore comprehend God, not as something distinct from the universe, but as being the universe himself. This form of expression is an acknowledgment of the weakness of the human faculties, and contains the implicit assertion of Locke that the notion of God is beyond man’s understanding (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, etc. ii chapter 17). ↩

This work was the colossal chryselephantine statue of Zeus (Jupiter) by Phidias, which was at Olympia. This wonderful work is described by Pausanias (Eliaca, A, 11). ↩

Compare Aulus Persius Flaccus, Satires iii 66:

Discite, io, miseri et causas cognoscite rerum,
Quid sumus aut quidnam victuri gignimur.

↩

Compare Marcus Aurelius, Meditations viii 50, and book II chapter XVI at 13. ↩

ἀφορμὰς. This word in this passage has a different meaning from that which it has when it is opposed to ὁρμή. See Thomas Gataker’s Meditations (Marcus Aurelius), ix 1 (John Upton). Epictetus says that the powers which man has were given by God; Marcus Aurelius says, from nature. They mean the same thing. See Johann Schweighäuser’s note. ↩

Compare Marcus Aurelius, Meditations ix 1. ↩

The title is περὶ τῆς χρείας τῶν μεταπιπτόντων καὶ ὑποθετικῶν καὶ τῶν ὁμοιων. Johann Schweighäuser has a big note on μεταπίπτοντες λόγοι, which he has collected from various critics. Elizabeth Carter translated the title “Of the Use of Convertible and Hypothetical Propositions and the like.” But “convertible” might be understood in the common logical sense, which is not the meaning of Epictetus. Schweighäuser explains μεταπίπτοντες λόγοι to be sophistical arguments in which the meaning of propositions or of terms, which ought to remain the same, is dexterously changed and perverted to another meaning. ↩

See Johann Schweighäuser’s note on ἀποδείξειν ἕκαστα ἀποδόντα. ↩

These are syllogisms and figures, modes (τρόποι) by which the syllogism has its proper conclusion. ↩

Compare Aristotle, Topics viii 1, 22 (Giulio Pace edition, 758). Afterwards Epictetus uses τὰ ὡμολογημένα as equivalent to λήμματα (premises or assumptions). ↩

“The inference,” τὸ ἐπιφερόμενον. “Ἐπιφορά est ‘illatio’ quae assumptionem sequitur” (John Upton). ↩

This, then, is a case of μεταπίπτοντες λόγοι (book I chapter VII at 1), where there has been a sophistical or dishonest change in the premises or in some term, by virtue of which change there appears to be a just conclusion, which, however, is false; and it is not a conclusion derived from the premises to which we assented. A ridiculous example is given by Seneca, Epistles 48: “Mus syllaba est: mus autem caseum rodit: syllaba ergo caseum rodit.” Seneca laughs at this absurdity, and says perhaps the following syllogism (collectio) may be a better example of