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

est, anteceptam animo rei quandam informationem, sine qua nec intelligi quidquam nec quaeri nec disputari potest.” Epicurus, as Cicero says in the following chapter (17), was the first who used πρόληψις in this sense, which Cicero applies to what he calls the ingrafted or rather innate cognitions of the existence of gods, and these cognitions he supposes to be universal; but whether this is so or not, I do not know. See i chapter 2; Tusculan Disputations i 24; De Finibus iii 6; and πρόληψις in book IV chapter VIII at 6. ↩

The word is ὅσιον, which is very difficult to translate. We may take an instance from ourselves. There is a general agreement about integrity, and about the worship of the supreme being, but a wondrous difference about certain acts or doings in trading, whether they are consistent with integrity or not; and a still more wondrous difference in forms of worship, whether they are conformable to religion or not. ↩

Horace, Epistles i 2. ↩

Iliad, i: The quarrel of Achilles and Agamemnon about giving up Chryseis to her father. ↩

The bath was a place of common resort, where a thief had the opportunity of carrying off a bather’s clothes. From men’s desires to have what they have not, and do not choose to labor for, spring the disorders of society, as it is said in the epistle of James 4, 5:1, to which Elizabeth Carter refers. ↩

See note 125. ↩

John Upton refers to a passage in the Theaetetus (p. 150, Stephanus pagination), where Socrates professes that it is his art to discover whether a young man’s mind is giving birth to an idol (an unreality) and a falsity, or to something productive and true; and he says (p. 151) that those who associate with him are like women in childbirth, for they are in labor and full of trouble nights and days much more than women, and his art has the power of stirring up and putting to rest this labor of childbirth.

The conclusion in the chapter is not clear. The student is supposed to be addressed by some rich old man, who really does not know what to say; and the best way of getting rid of him and his idle talk is by dismissing him with a joke. See Johann Schweighäuser’s note. ↩

That is in the body; see book I chapter XX at 17. Compare book II chapter XX at the beginning of the chapter. ↩

The word ὑπονοητικοί is not intelligible. Johann Schweighäuser suggests that it ought to be προνοητικοί, “how have we any care for others?” Epicurus taught that we should not marry nor beget children nor engage in public affairs, because these things disturb our tranquillity. ↩

So Ovid says, Tristia iv 3, 79:

Quae latet inque bonis cessat non cognita rebus,
Apparet virtus argniturque malis.

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In the time of Domitian philosophers were banished from Rome and Italy by a Senatusconsultum (Suetonius Domitianus chapter 10; Cassius Dio’s Roman History, 67, chapter 13), and at that time Epictetus, as Aulus Gellius says (Attic Nights xv 11), went from Rome to Nicopolis in Epirus, where he opened a school. We may suppose that Epictetus is here speaking of some person who had gone from Nicopolis to Rome to inquire about the state of affairs there under the cruel tyrant Domitian. (Johann Schweighäuser.) ↩

Diogenes was brought to king Philip after the battle of Chaeronea as a spy (book III chapter XXII at 24). Plutarch in the treatise, Quomodo assentator ab amico dignoscatur, chapter 30, states that when Philip asked Diogenes if he was a spy, he replied, “Certainly I am a spy, Philip, of your want of judgment and of your folly, which lead you without any necessity to put to the hazard your kingdom and your life in one single hour.” ↩

The garment with the broad border, the laticlave, was the dress of a senator; the garment with the narrow border, the angusticlave, was the dress of a man of the equestrian order. ↩

The exclamation of Oedipus in the Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles, line 1390. ↩

This means “you can die when you please.” Compare book I chapter IX. The power of dying when you please is named by Plinius (Naturalis Historia ii chapter 7) the best thing that God has given to man amidst all the sufferings of life. Horace, Epistles ii 2, 213:

Vivere si recte nescis, decede peritis:
Lusisti satis, edisti satis atque bibisti;
Tempus abire tibi.

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The conclusion “and you will then see,” is not in the text, but it is what Epictetus means. The argument is complete. If we admit the existence of God, and that he is our father, as Epictetus teaches, we have from him the intellectual powers which we possess; and those men in whom these powers have been roused to activity, and are exercised, require no other instructor. It is true that in a large part of mankind these powers are inactive and are not exercised, or if they are exercised, it is in a very imperfect way. But those who contemplate the improvement of the human race, hope that all men, or if not all men a great number, will be roused to the exercise of the powers which they have, and that human life will be made more conformable to Nature, that is, that