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

which he has received; and this is also a divine act. Paul’s opinion of marriage is contained in 1 Corinthians 7. Some of his teaching on this matter has been justly condemned. He has no conception of the true nature of marriage; at least he does not show that he has in this chapter. His teaching is impracticable, contrary to that of Epictetus, and to the nature and constitution of man; and it is rejected by the good sense of Christians who affect to receive his teaching; except, I suppose, by the superstitious body of Christians, who recommend and commend the so-called religious, and unmarried life. ↩

Felicion. See book I chapter XIX. ↩

Epictetus alludes to his lameness: compare book I chapter VIII at 14; book I chapter XVI at 20; and other passages. (John Upton.) ↩

Johann Schweighäuser doubts if the words οὐ γὰρ ἡν, which I have omitted, are genuine, and gives his reasons for the doubt. ↩

Johann Schweighäuser has a note on this difficult passage, which is rather obscure. ↩

The sense of “law” (ὁ νόμος) can be collected from what follows. Compare the discourse of Socrates on obedience to the law. (Criton, chapter 11, etc.) ↩

See Johann Schweighäuser’s note on ἀπεριστάτου. ↩

Socrates fought at Potidaea, Amphipolis and Delium. He is said to have gained the prize for courage at Delium. He was a brave soldier as well as a philosopher, a union of qualities not common. (Plato’s Apology.) ↩

Socrates with others was ordered by the Thirty tyrants, who at that time governed Athens, to arrest Leon in the island of Salamis and to bring him to be put to death. But Socrates refused to obey the order. Few men would have done what he did under the circumstances. (Plato’s Apology; Marcus Aurelius, Meditations vii 66.) ↩

Cicero, Tusculan Disputations i 29. ↩

The Dialog of Plato, named Criton, contains the arguments which were used by his friends to persuade Socrates to escape from prison, and the reply of Socrates. ↩

This alludes to the behavior of Socrates when he refused to put to the vote the matter of the Athenian generals and their behavior after the naval battle of Arginusae. The violence of the weather prevented the commanders from collecting and honorably burying those who fell in the battle; and the Athenians, after their hasty fashion, wished all the commanders to be put to death. But Socrates, who was in office at this time, resisted the unjust clamour of the people. Xenophon Hellenica, i chapter 7, 15; Plato, Apologia; Xenophon, Memorabilia i 1, 18. ↩

The original is ποῦ γὰρ ἂν ἔτι ἔμενον ἐκεῖνοι; this seems to mean, if we had escaped and left the country, where would those have been to whom we might have been useful? They would have been left behind, and we could have done nothing for them. ↩

This is the conclusion about Socrates, whom Epictetus highly valued: the remembrance of what Socrates did and said is even more useful than his life. “The life of the dead,” says Cicero of Servius Sulpicius, the great Roman jurist and Cicero’s friend, “rests in the remembrance of the living.” Epictetus has told us of some of the acts of Socrates, which prove him to have been a brave and honest man. He does not tell us here what Socrates said, which means what he taught; but he knew what it was. Modern writers have expounded the matter at length, and in a form which Epictetus would not or could not have used.⁠—Socrates left to others the questions which relate to the material world, and he first taught, as we are told, the things which concern man’s daily life and his intercourse with other men: in other words he taught Ethic (the principles of morality). Fields and trees, he said, will teach me nothing, but man in his social state will; and man then is the proper subject of the philosophy of Socrates. The beginning of this knowledge was as he said, to know himself according to the precept of the Delphic oracle, “Know thyself (γνῶθι σεαυτόν)”: and the object of his philosophy was to comprehend the nature of man as a moral being in all relations; and among these the relation of man to God as the father of all, creator and ruler of all, as Plato expresses it. Socrates taught that what we call death is not the end of man; death is only the road to another life. The death of Socrates was conformable to his life and teaching. “Socrates died not only with the noblest courage and tranquillity, but he also refused, as we are told, to escape from death, which the laws of the state permitted, by going into exile or paying a fine, because as he said, if he had himself consented to a fine or allowed others to propose it, (Xenophon, Apology of Socrates §22), such an act would have been an admission of his guilt. Both (Socrates and Jesus) offered themselves with the firmest resolution for a holy cause, which was so far from being lost through their death that it only served rather to make it the general cause of mankind.” (Das Christliche des Platonismus oder Socrates und Christus, by Ferdinand Christian Baur.)

This essay by Baur is very ingenious. Perhaps there are some readers who will disagree with him on many points in the comparison of Socrates and Christus. However the essay is well worth the trouble of reading.

The opinion of Rousseau in his comparison