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

is ridiculing the men who compliment one another on their writings. John Upton compares Horace, Epistles ii 2, 87.

ut alter
Alterius sermone meros audiret honores⁠—
Discedo Alcaeus puncto lllius? ille meo quis?
Quis nisi Callimachus?

↩

Compare book I chapter XIX at 4. ↩

Johann Schweighäuser has no doubt that we ought instead of συναγωγάς, “collections,” to read εἰσαγωγάς, “introductions.” ↩

As to Archedemus, see book II chapter IV at 11; and Antipater, book II chapter XIX at 2. ↩

See book IV chapter XII. ↩

ἀῤῥωστήματα. “Aegrotationes quae appellantur a Stoicis ἀῤῥωστήματα” Cicero, Tusculan Disputations iv 10. ↩

κομψῶς σοί ἐστι. Compare the Gospel of St. John 4:52, ἐπύθετο οὖν παρ᾽ αὐτῶν τὴν ὥραν ἐν ᾗ κομψότερον ἔσχε. ↩

Placet enim Chrysippo cum gradatim interrogetur, verbi causa, tria pauca sint anne multa, aliquanto prius quam ad multa perveniat quiescere; id est quod ab iis dicitur ἡσυχάζειν. Cicero, Academica ii Pr. 29. Compare Persius, Satires vi 80:

Depinge ubi sistam,
Inventus, Chrysippe, tui finitor acervi.

↩

The passage is in Plato, Laws, ix p. 854, ὅταν σοι προσπίπτῃ τι τῶν τοιούτων δογμάτων, etc. The conclusion is, “if you cannot be cured of your (mental) disease, seek death which is better and depart from life.” This bears some resemblance to the precept in Matthew 6:29 “And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee,” etc. ↩

Hercules is said to have established gymnastic contests and to have been the first victor. Those who gained the victory both in wrestling and in the pancratium were reckoned in the list of victors as coming in the second or third place after him, and so on. ↩

I have followed Hieronymus Wolff’s conjecture πύκτας instead of the old reading παίκτας. ↩

Compare book III chapter XII at 15. ↩

Castor and Pollux. Horace, Odes i 12:

Quorum simul alba nautis
Stella refulsit, etc.

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Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights xix chapter 1, “visa quae vi quadam sua sese inferunt noscitanda hominibus.” ↩

“Consider that everything is opinion, and opinion is in thy power. Take away then, when thou choosest, thy opinion, and like a mariner, who has doubled the promontory, thou wilt find calm, everything stable, and a waveless pay.” Marcus Aurelius, Meditations xii 22. ↩

Hesiod, Works and Days, v 411. ↩

Compare Aulus Gellius Attic Nights xvii chapter 19. ↩

See the long note communicated to John Upton by James Harris; and Johann Schweighäuser’s note. ↩

Diodorus, surnamed Cronus, lived at Alexandria in the time of Ptolemaeus Soter. He was of the school named the Megaric, and distinguished in dialectic. ↩

If you assume any two of these three, they must be in contradiction to the third and destroy it. ↩

“Speak to me,” etc. may be supposed to be said to Epictetus, who has been ridiculing logical subtleties and the grammarians’ learning. When he is told to speak of good and evil, he takes a verse of the Odyssey, the first which occurs to him, and says, “Listen.” There is nothing to listen to, but it is as good for the hearer as anything else. Then he utters some philosophical principles, and being asked where he learned them, he says, from Hellanicus, who was an historian, not a philosopher. He is bantering the hearer: “it makes no matter from what author I learned them; it is all the same. The real question is, have you examined what Good and Evil are, and have you formed an opinion yourself?” ↩

The Peripatetics allowed many things to be good which contributed to a happy life; but still they contended that the smallest mental excellence was superior to all other things. Cicero, De Finibus v 5, 31. ↩

See book II chapter VIII at 20. ↩

“To blame God” means to blame the constitution and order of things, for to do this appeared to Epictetus to be absurd and wicked; as absurd as for the potter’s vessel to blame the potter, if that can be imagined, for making it liable to wear out and to break. ↩

“Our fellowship is with the Father and with his son Jesus Christ,” 1 John 1:3. “The attentive reader will observe several passages besides those which have been noticed, in which there is a striking conformity between Epictetus and the Scriptures: and will perceive from them, either that the Stoics had learnt a good deal of the Christian language or that treating a subject practically and in earnest leads men to such strong expressions as we often find in Scripture and sometimes in the philosophers, especially Epictetus.” —⁠Elizabeth Carter.

The word “fellowship” in the passage of John and of Epictetus is κοινωνία. See note 205. ↩

“Itaque Arcesilas negabat esse quidquam quod soiri posset, ne illud quidem ipsum, quod Socrates sibi reliquisset. Sic omnia latere censebat in occulto, neque ease quidquam quod oerni aut intelligi possit. Quibus de causis nihil oportere neque profiteri neque adfirmare quemquam neque adsensione adprobare.” Cicero, Academica Posteriora 1, 12; Diogenes Laërtius Lives ix 90 of the Pyrrhonists. ↩