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

every man or even for many men, for he knew and has told us how bad many men are, and how few are good according to his measure and rule: in fact his meaning is plainly expressed. The dying speech may even be stronger in the sense in which Carter understands it, in my translation, where I have rendered one passage in the text by the words “I have not dishonored thee by my acts,” which she translates, “as far as in me lay, I have not dishonored thee;” which apparently means, “as far as I could, I have not dishonored thee.” The Latin translation “quantum in me fuit,” seems rather ambiguous to me.

There is a general confession of sins in the prayer book of the Church of England, part of which Epictetus would not have rejected, I think. Of course the words which form the peculiar Christian character of the confession would have been unintelligible to him. It is a confession which all persons of all conditions are supposed to make. If all persons made the confession with sincerity, it ought to produce a corresponding behavior and make men more ready to be kind to one another, for all who use it confess that they fail in their duty, and it ought to lower pride and banish arrogance from the behavior of those who in wealth and condition are elevated above the multitude. But I have seen it somewhere said, I cannot remember where, but said in no friendly spirit to Christian prayer, that some men both priests and laymen prostrate themselves in humility before God and indemnify themselves by arrogance to man. ↩

See book IV chapter II at 2. ↩

These were what the Romans named “sportulæ,” in which the rich used to give some eatables to poor dependents who called to pay their respects to the great at an early hour.

Nune sportula primo
Limine parva sedet turbae rapienda togatae.

—⁠Juvenal, Satires i 95

↩

“You cannot serve God and Mammon.” Matthew 6:24. (Elizabeth Carter.) ↩

See book IV chapter II at 5. ↩

Compare book I chapter XV at 18; and book I chapter IX at 20. ↩

See the note in Johann Schweighäuser’s edition. ↩

Epictetus refers to the passage in the Iliad xxiv 5, where Achilles is lamenting the death of Patroclus and cannot sleep. ↩

“This is a wretched idea of friendship; but a necessary consequence of the Stoic system. What a fine contrast to this gloomy consolation are the noble sentiments of an Apostle? Value your deceased friend, says Epictetus, as a broken pipkin; forget him, as a thing worthless, lost and destroyed. St. Paul, on the contrary, comforts the mourning survivors; bidding them not sorrow, as those who have no hope: but remember that the death of good persons is only a sleep; from which they will soon arise to a happy immortality.” —⁠Elizabeth Carter.

Epictetus does not say, “value your deceased friend as a broken pipkin.” Achilles laments that he has lost the services of his friend at table, a vulgar kind of complaint: he is thinking of his own loss, instead of his friend. The answer is such a loss as he laments is easily repaired: the loss of such a friend is as easily repaired as the loss of a cooking vessel. Carter in her zeal to contrast the teaching of the Apostle with that of Epictetus seems to forget for the time that Epictetus, so far as we know, did not accept or did not teach the doctrine of a future life. As to what he thought of friendship, if it was a real friendship, such as we can conceive, I am sure that he did not think of it as Carter says that he did; for true friendship implies many of the virtues which Epictetus taught and practiced. He has a chapter on Friendship, book II chapter XXII, which I suppose that Carter did not think of when she wrote this note. ↩

The word is τὸ κοινωνικον. Compare book I chapter XXIII at 1; book II chapter X at 14; book II chapter XX at 6. ↩

In the text there are two words, καφαρός which means “pure,” and καφάριος which means “of a pure nature,” “loving purity.” ↩

The ξύστρα, as Epictetus names it, was the Roman “strigilis,” which was used for the scraping and cleaning of the body in bathing. Persius (Satire V, line 126) writes:

I, puer, et strigiles Crispini ad balnea defer.

The strigiles “were of bronze or iron of various forms. They were applied to the body much in the same way as we see a piece of hoop applied to a sweating horse.” Pompeii, edited by Thomas Henry Dyer. ↩

See Johann Schweighäuser’s note. ↩

See Johann Schweighäuser’s note. If the text is right, the form of expression is inexact and does not clearly express the meaning; but the meaning may be easily discovered. ↩

See what is said of this passage in the latter part of this chapter. ↩

Aristophanes, Nubes, line 225, and v. 179. ↩

Xenophon, Memorabilia iii 12. ↩

See book III chapter XXII at 88. ↩

Diogenes, it is said, was driven from his native town Sinope in Asia on a charge of having debased or counterfeited the coinage. (John Upton.) It is probable that this is false.