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

may see such men everywhere if you will keep your eyes open. Such men, who live by daily labor, live a heroic life, which puts to shame the well-fed philosopher and the wealthy Christian.

Epictetus has made a great misstatement about irrational animals. Millions die annually for want of sufficient food; and many human beings perish in the same way. We can hardly suppose that he did not know these facts.

Compare the passage in Matthew 6:25⁠–⁠34). It is said, verse 26: “Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?” The expositors of this passage may be consulted. ↩

The old man is Epictetus. ↩

He means, as Hieronymus Wolf says, “on account of the necessities of the body seeking the favor of the more powerful by disagreeable compliances.” ↩

John Upton refers to Cicero, Tusculan Disputations i 30; Cato Major, chapter 20; Somnium Scipionis, chapter 3 (De Republica, iv 15); the purport of which passage is that we must not depart from life without the command of God. See Marcus Aurelius, Meditations ii 17; iii 5; v 33. But how shall a man know the signal for departure, of which Epictetus speaks? ↩

John Upton has referred to the passages of Epictetus in which this expression is used, book I chapter XXIV at 20; book I chapter XXV at 18; book II chapter I at 19, and others; to Seneca, De Providentia chapter 6, Ep. 91; to Cicero, De Finibus iii 18, where there is this conclusion: “e quo apparet et sapientis esse aliquando officium excedere e vita, quum beatus sit; et stulti manere in vita quum sit miser.”

Compare Matthew 6:31: “Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things,” etc. ↩

This passage is founded on and is in substance the same as that in Plato’s Apology, chapter 17. ↩

Johann Schweighäuser has a long note on this passage, to “receive from another.” I think that there is no difficulty about the meaning; and the careful reader will find none. Epictetus was once a slave. ↩

The meaning is obscure. Johann Schweighäuser thinks that the allusion is to a defeated enemy asking permission from the conqueror to bury the dead. Epictetus considers a man as a mere carcass who places his happiness in externals and in the favor of others. ↩

A “Præfectus Annonæ,” or superintendent of the supply of corn at Rome is first mentioned by Livy (History of Rome iv 12) as appointed during a scarcity. At a later time this office was conferred on Pompey for five years. Gaius Maecenas (Cassius Dio’s Roman History 52, chapter 24) advised Augustus to make a Praefectus Annonae or permanent officer over the corn market and all other markets (ἐπὶ τοῦ σίτου τῆς τε ἀγορᾶς τῆς λοιπῆς). He would thus have the office formerly exercised by the aediles. ↩

I cannot explain why the third person is used here instead of the second. See Johann Schweighäuser’s note. ↩

The Stoics taught that man is adapted by his nature for action. He ought not therefore to withdraw from human affairs, and indulge in a lazy life, not even a life of contemplation and religious observances only. John Upton refers to Marcus Aurelius, Meditations v 1, viii 19, and Cicero, De Finibus v. 20. ↩

Johann Schweighäuser proposes a small alteration in the Greek text, but I do not think it necessary. When Epictetus says, “Why are we not active?” He means, “Why do some say that we are not active?” And he intends to say that “We are active, but not in the way in which some people are active.” I have therefore added in parentheses what is necessary to make the text intelligible. ↩

This passage is rather obscure. The word ἐπαναγνῶναι signifies, it is said, to read over for the purpose of explaining as a teacher may do. The pupil also would read something to the teacher for the purpose of showing if he understood it. So Epictetus also says, “But what is it to me,” etc. ↩

A plain allusion to restraints put on the exportation of grain. ↩

“When we are children our parents put us in the hands of a pedagogue to see on all occasions that we take no harm.” —⁠Epictetus, Fragment 97 ↩

κἂν μεταδόξῃ, “if you should change your mind,” as we say. So we may translate, in the previous part of this chapter, ἔδοξεν ἡμῖν, and the like, “we had a mind to such and such a thing.” Below it is said that the causes of our actions are “our opinions and our wills,” where the Greek for “wills” is δόγματα. If we translate ἔδοξεν ἡμῖν, “seemed right,” as some persons would translate it, that is not the meaning, unless we understand “seemed right” in a sense in which it is often used, that is, a man’s resolve to do so-and-so. See Johann Schweighäuser’s note on ὑπόληψις and δόγμα. As Marcus Aurelius says (Meditations viii 1): “How then shall a man do this (what his nature