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

θεραπεύουσι. Epictetus continues to use the same word. ↩

Febris, fever, was a goddess at Rome. John Upton refers to an inscription in Jan Gruter (Inscriptiones antiquae totius orbis Romani 97), which begins “Febri Divae.” Compare Lactantius, De falsa religione, chapter 20. ↩

Compare book I chapter III. ↩

The word is φίλαυτον, self-love, but here it means self-regard, which implies no censure. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics ix chapter 8: ὡς ἐν αἰσχρῷ φιλαύτους ἀποκαλοῦσι. His conclusion is: οὕτω μὲν οὖν δεῖ φίλαυτον εἶναι, καθάπερ εἴρηται ὡς δ̓ οἱ πολλοί, οὐ χρή. See the note of Johann Schweighäuser. Epictetus, as usual, is right in his opinion of man’s nature. ↩

This has been misunderstood by Hieronymus Wolf. Johann Schweighäuser, who always writes like a man of sense, says: “Epictetus means by ‘our proper interests,’ the interests proper to man, as a man, as a rational being; and this interest or good consists in the proper use of our powers, and so far from being repugnant to common interest or utility, it contains within itself the notion of general utility and cannot be separated from it.” ↩

Such a man was named in Greek κοιτωνίτης; in Latin “cubicularius,” a lord of the bedchamber, as we might say. Seneca, De Constantia Sapientis, chapter 14, speaks “of the pride of the nomenclator (the announcer of the name), of the arrogance of the bedchamber man.” Even the clerk of the close-stool was an important person. Slaves used to carry this useful domestic vessel on a journey. Horace Satires i 6, 109 (John Upton). ↩

Once the master of Epictetus (book I chapter I at 20). ↩

Hand-kissing was in those times of tyranny the duty of a slave, not of a free man. This servile practice still exists among men called free. ↩

Johann Schweighäuser says that he has introduced into the text Lord Shaftesbury’s emendation, ὅπου. The emendation ὅπου is good, but Schweighäuser has not put it in his text: he has οἷ τὸ ἀγαθὸν τιθέμεθα. Matthew 6:21, “for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” So these people show by thanking God, what it is for which they are thankful. ↩

Isaac Casaubon, in a learned note on Suetonius, Augustus, chapter 18, informs us that divine honors were paid to Augustus at Nicopolis, which town he founded after the victory at Actium. The priesthood of Augustus at Nicopolis was a high office, and the priest gave his name to the year; that is, when it was intended in any writing to fix the year, either in any writing which related to public matters, or in instruments used in private affairs, the name of the priest of Augustus was used, and this was also the practice in most Greek cities. In order to establish the sense of this passage, Casaubon changed the text from τὰς φωνάς into τὰ σύμφωνα, which emendation Johann Schweighäuser has admitted into his text. ↩

A comparison of book I chapter I will help to explain this chapter. Compare also book I chapter XVII. ↩

Hieronymus Wolf suggests that we should read προηγουμένως instead of προηγουμένων. ↩

See Johann Schweighäuser’s note. ↩

“We reckon death among the things which are indifferent (indifferentia), which the Greeks name ἀδιάφορα. But I name ‘indifferent’ the things which are neither good nor bad, as disease, pain, poverty, exile, death.” —⁠Seneca, Epistle 82 ↩

Zeno, a native of Citium, in the island of Cyprus, is said to have come when he was young to Athens, where he spent the rest of a long life in the study and teaching of Philosophy. He was the founder of the Stoic sect, and a man respected for his ability and high character. He wrote many philosophical works. Zeno was succeeded in his school by Cleanthes. ↩

Follow. See book I chapter XII at 5. ↩

“I now have what the universal nature wills me to have, and I do what my nature now wills me to do.” Marcus Aurelius, Meditations v 25, and xi 5.

Epictetus never attempts to say what God is. He was too wise to attempt to do what man cannot do. But man does attempt to do it, and only shows the folly of his attempts, and, I think, his presumption also. ↩

Epicurus is said to have written more than any other person, as many as three hundred volumes (κύλινδροι, rolls). Chrysippus was his rival in this respect. For if Epicurus wrote anything, Chrysippus vied with him in writing as much; and for this reason he often repeated himself, because he did not read over what he had written, and he left his writings uncorrected in consequence of his hurry. Diogenes Laërtius, Lives x⁠—John Upton. See i 4. ↩

Precognitions (προλήψεις) is translated Praecognita by John Smith, Select Discourses, p. 4. Cicero says (Topica, 7): “Notionem appello quod Graeci tum ἔννοιαν, tum πρόληψιν dicunt. Ea est insita et ante percepta cujusque formae cognitio, enodationis indigens.” In the De Natura Deorum (i 16) he says: “Quae est enim gens aut quod genus hominum, quod non habeat sine doctrina anticipationem quandam deorum, quam appellat πρόληψιν Epicurus? id