239Epictetus was born a slave in Hierapolis, a small town in Phrygia, Asia Minor
(in present-day Turkey). His master was Epaphroditus, a member of Emperor
Nero’s personal staff in Rome. As was often done at that time, Epaphroditus saw to
it that Epictetus had a good education, sending him to study with the Roman Stoic,
Rufus. Epictetus gained his freedom sometime after the death of the emperor in
A.D. 68 and began to teach philosophy in Rome. In A.D. 89 or 93 Emperor
Domitian expelled all philosophers from Rome. Domitian seems to have been
especially angry with the Stoics for teaching that sovereignty comes from God and
is for the benefit of the people. (Epictetus’s reported claim that he had the same
regard for the emperor as for his water-pot could not have helped.) Epictetus
moved to Nicropolis in Epirus (northwestern Greece), where he established a
thriving Stoic school and lived a simple life with few material goods. As an old
man, he married so that he could adopt a child who otherwise would have been
“exposed,” that is, left to die. Those whom he taught described him as a humble,
charitable man of great moral and religious devotion.
Epictetus never wrote anything, but one of his admiring students, Arrian, com-
posed eight Discoursesbased on Epictetus’s lectures, along with a summary of the
great man’s thought, the Handbook(Enchiridion). The Handbook,given here com-
plete in the outstanding new Keith Seddon translation, builds on the early Stoa’s
concept of Logos.Since the Logosor natural law permeates everything, it provides
us with moral intuition, so all persons have the capacity for virtue. But in order to
live the moral life, one must apply these intuitions to specific cases. Education is
necessary if we are to learn how to properly connect moral insights with life. We
must begin by recognizing the fact that we cannot change events that happen to us,
but we can change our attitude toward those events. To accomplish this and achieveEPICTETUS
ca. A.D. 50–ca. A.D. 130