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

A people in Thessaly between the river Peneius and Mount Olympus. It is the same as if Epictetus had said to any remote country. ↩

On the word καρπιστήν see the notes in Johann Schweighäuser’s edition. The word is supposed to be formed from καρπίς, καρφίς, festuca. ↩

Μεταπίπτοντας. See book I chapter VII. ↩

This is an old practice, to go about and sell physic to people. Cicero (Pro Cluentio, chapter 14) speaks of such a quack (pharmacopola), who would do a poisoning job for a proper sum of money. I have seen a travelling doctor in France who went about in a cart and rang a bell, at the sound of which people came round him. Some who were deaf had stuff poured into their ears, paid their money, and made way for others who had other complaints. ↩

It was the custom in Roman triumphs for a slave to stand behind the triumphant general in his chariot and to remind him that he was still mortal. Juvenal, Satires x 41. ↩

Compare Marcus Aurelius Meditations xi 33 and 34. ↩

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations xi 35. Compare book III chapter XIII at 14, and book IV chapter VII at 75. ↩

John Upton altered the text οὐκέτι οὖν ἔσομαι; Οὐκ ἔσῃ ἀλλ᾽ ἄλλο τι, οὗ νῦν ὁ κόσμος χρείαν ἔχει, into οὔκετι οὖν ἔσομαι; Ἔσῃ ἀλλ᾽ ἄλλο τι, οὗ νῦν ὁ κόσμος χρείαν οὐκ ἔχει. He says that he made the alteration without manuscript authority, but that the sense requires the change. Johann Schweighäuser does not accept the alteration, nor do I. Schweighäuser remarks that there may be some difficulty in the words οὗ νῦν ὁ κόσμος χρείαν ἔχει. He first supposes that the word “now” (νῦν) means after a man’s death; but next he suggests that ἄλλο τι οὗ means “something different from that of which the world has now need.” A reader might not discover that there is any difficulty. He might also suggest that νῦν ought to be omitted, for if it were omitted, the sense would be still plainer. See book III chapter XIII at 15; and book IV chapter VII at 15. ↩

I am not sure if Epictetus ever uses κόσμος in the sense of “Universe,” the “universum” of philosophers. I think he sometimes uses it in the common sense of the world, the earth and all that is on it. Epictetus appears to teach that when a man dies, his existence is terminated. The body is resolved into the elements of which it is formed, and these elements are employed for other purposes. Consistently with this doctrine he may have supposed that the powers, which we call rational and intellectual, exist in man by virtue only of the organisation of his brain which is superior to that of all other animals; and that what we name the soul has no existence independent of the body. It was an old Greek hypothesis that at death the body returned to earth from which it came, and the soul (πνεῦμα) returned to the regions above, from which it came. I cannot discover any passage in Epictetus in which the doctrine is taught that the soul has an existence independent of the body. The opinions of Marcus Aurelius on this matter are contained in his book, Meditations iv 14, 21, and perhaps elsewhere: but they are rather obscure. A recent writer has attempted to settle the question of the existence of departed souls by affirming that we can find no place for them either in heaven or in hell; for the modern scientific notion, as I suppose that it must be named, does not admit the conception of a place heaven or a place hell (David Friedrich Strauss, Der Alte und der Neue Glaube, p. 129).

We may name Paul a contemporary of Epictetus, for though Epictetus may have been the younger, he was living at Rome during Nero’s reign (54⁠–⁠68 BC); and it is affirmed, whether correctly or not I do not undertake to say, that Paul wrote from Ephesus his first epistle to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 16:8) in the beginning of 56 AD. Epictetus, it is said, lived in Rome till the time of the expulsion of the philosophers by Domitian, when he retired to Nicopolis an old man, and taught there. Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians (chapter 15) contains his doctrine of the resurrection, which is accepted, I believe, by all, or nearly all, if there are any exceptions, who profess the Christian faith: but it is not understood by all in the same way.

Paul teaches that Christ died for our sins, that he was buried and rose again on the third day; and that after his resurrection he was seen by many persons. Then he asks, if Christ rose from the dead, how can some say that there is no resurrection of the dead? “But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen” (verse 13); and (verse 19), “if in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” But he affirms again (verse 20) that “Christ is risen and become the first fruits of them that slept.” In verse 32, he asks what advantages he has from his struggles in Ephesus, “if the dead rise not: let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” He seems not to admit the value of life, if there