Selections from Epictetus
"Epictetus was probably born at Hierapolis in Phrygia, and he lived at Rome in the first century of our era, as the slave of Epaphroditus, a freedman of Nero. Origen preserves an anecdote of Epictetus, that, when his master once put his leg in the torture, his philosophic slave quietly remarked, 'You will break my leg; 1 and, when this presently happened, he added, in the same tone, ' Did I not tell you so? ' He afterwards became free, and lived very frugally at Rome, teaching philosophy. Simplicius says that the whole furniture of his house consisted of a bed, a cooking- vessel, and an earthen lamp. " When Domitian banished the philosophers from Rome, Epictetus retired to Nicopolis, a city of Epirus, where he taught as before until he was an old man.
He still lived in the same frugal way, his only companions being a young child, whom he adopted, in the later years of his life, because its parents abandoned it, and a woman whom he employed as its nurse. He suffered from extreme lameness. After Hadrian became Emperor (a.d. 117), Epictetus was treated with favour, but probably did not return to Rome. In these later years of his life, his discourses were written down by his disciple, Arrian, a man of the highest character, both as a philosopher and as a historian. But four of the original eight books remain. The date of Epictetus's death is entirely unknown."
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