Epictetus (c. AD 50–135) was born enslaved in Hierapolis in Phrygia and carried to Rome as the property of Epaphroditus, a wealthy freedman who served as a secretary to the emperor Nero. Ancient tradition says the lameness he walked with for life came when his master twisted his leg and Epictetus remarked, calmly, that it would break. While still a slave he studied Stoic philosophy under Musonius Rufus, the leading Roman Stoic of the day, and he was freed sometime after Nero’s death. He taught in Rome until the emperor Domitian banished the philosophers from the city, whereupon he crossed to Nicopolis in northwestern Greece and founded the school that made his name.
His lectures were not sermons. Students at Nicopolis were drilled in one sorting exercise above all: what is in our power (opinion, desire, aversion, and our own acts) and what is not (the body, property, reputation, office). His pupil Arrian sat in that classroom with a notebook, and the notes became the Discourses. Their pocket summary, the Enchiridion, or Handbook, compresses the whole teaching into fifty-three short chapters meant to be kept ready at hand. Epictetus kept to the life he taught: he lived simply at Nicopolis, never married, and late in life took in a friend’s orphaned child rather than see the boy exposed.
An emperor studied him. In the Meditations, Marcus Aurelius thanks his teacher Rusticus for lending him Epictetus’s lectures out of his own library. The Handbook went on to be copied by monks, carried into battle by soldiers, and quoted by Albert Ellis, a founder of cognitive behavioral therapy, who built on the line that men are disturbed by their opinions rather than by events themselves. No portrait of Epictetus was made in his lifetime, and none survives. The engraving shown here, from an early eighteenth-century Oxford edition of the Enchiridion, is how the centuries have chosen to picture the lame former slave who taught Rome self-command.
Core Ideas
- Sort everything by control. Opinion, desire, aversion, and your own acts are yours; body, property, reputation, and office are not. Freedom starts where the sorting is done honestly.
- Opinions deliver the blow. Events arrive neutral, and the judgment stamped on them is where the pain or the calm gets made, so every impression gets questioned before it is signed.
- Hold things like a traveler at an inn. Nothing outside your choices is truly yours, and what was on loan can be returned without protest: say “I have restored it,” not “I have lost it.”
- Play the part you were dealt. The casting and the length of the play belong to the author. The acting belongs to you, and a small part played well beats a grand one played badly.
- Train daily, in small acts. Every habit grows by its corresponding exercise: read to become a reader, write to become a writer, and practice calm the same way, one resisted impulse at a time.
Epictetus Quotes
“Of things some are in our power, and others are not. In our power are opinion, movement towards a thing, desire, aversion, turning from a thing; and in a word, whatever are our acts. Not in our power are the body, property, reputation, offices (magisterial power), and in a word, whatever are not our own acts.”
— Enchiridion, ch. I
“And the things in our power are by nature free, not subject to restraint or hindrance; but the things not in our power are weak, slavish, subject to restraint, in the power of others.”
— Enchiridion, ch. I
“Men are disturbed not by the things which happen, but by the opinions about the things; for example, death is nothing terrible, for if it were it would have seemed so to Socrates; for the opinion about death that it is terrible, is the terrible thing.”
— Enchiridion, ch. V
“Seek not that the things which happen should happen as you wish; but wish the things which happen to be as they are, and you will have a tranquil flow of life.”
— Enchiridion, ch. VIII
“Never say about anything, I have lost it, but say I have restored it. Is your child dead? It has been restored. Is your wife dead? She has been restored. Has your estate been taken from you? Has not then this also been restored?”
— Enchiridion, ch. XI
“Remember that in life you ought to behave as at a banquet. Suppose that something is carried round and is opposite to you. Stretch out your hand and take a portion with decency. Suppose that it passes by you. Do not detain it.”
— Enchiridion, ch. XV
“Remember that thou art an actor in a play, of such a kind as the teacher (author) may choose; if short, of a short one; if long, of a long one: if he wishes you to act the part of a poor man, see that you act the part naturally; if the part of a lame man, of a magistrate, of a private person, (do the same). For this is your duty, to act well the part that is given to you; but to select the part, belongs to another.”
— Enchiridion, ch. XVII
“Everything has two handles, the one by which it may be borne, the other by which it may not. If your brother acts unjustly, do not lay hold of the act by that handle wherein he acts unjustly, for this is the handle which cannot be borne; but lay hold of the other, that he is your brother, that he was nurtured with you, and you will lay hold of the thing by that handle by which it can be borne.”
— Enchiridion, ch. XLIII
“It is impossible for a man to begin to learn that which he thinks that he knows.”
— Discourses, Book II, ch. 17
“Every habit and faculty is maintained and increased by the corresponding actions: the habit of walking by walking, the habit of running by running. If you would be a good reader, read; if a writer, write.”
— Discourses, Book II, ch. 18
Epictetus Books
“The Enchiridion” – by Epictetus, translated by George Long. The handbook itself: fifty-three short chapters written to be carried and used, in the classic nineteenth-century English rendering, Dover Thrift edition. Start here if you want the teaching at full strength in an afternoon.
“Discourses and Selected Writings” – by Epictetus, translated by Robert Dobbin. The Penguin one-volume Epictetus: generous selections from Arrian’s lecture notes alongside the complete Enchiridion, with the fuller arguments and classroom exchanges the handbook compresses.
“The Art of Living” – by Epictetus, interpreted by Sharon Lebell. A modern rendering that restates the teaching in contemporary English. The gentlest first door for a reader new to the Stoics, and a good companion once the handbook feels familiar.
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