Epaphroditus was probably a very bad master, and as a favorite and intimate of Nero’s must have been a bad man; but we have to thank him for the fact that Epictetus, while yet a slave, was sent to attend the philosophic lectures of Musonius Rufus, an eminent Stoic of Rome, whom both Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius mention with great respect. The system of philosophic training had been at this time long organized. There were masters of repute everywhere, who delivered their instruction in regular courses, received a fixed payment for the same, and under whom crowds of young men assembled from far and near to study science and ethics—to receive, in short, what corresponded to a university education in those days. The curious circumstance that a slave like Epictetus could participate in advantages of this kind is generally explained as the result of a fashionable whim which possessed Roman nobles at this time for having philosophers and men of culture among their slaves. Professor Mahaffy, in his Greek Life and Thought (p. 132), commenting on the summons of the two philosophers, Anaxarchus and Callisthenes, to console Alexander after his murder of Cleitus, observes, that it was probably usual to call in philosophers to minister professionally in cases of affliction. From this, to making a philosopher a regular adjunct to a large household, even as the baron of later times kept a fool, the step is not great. But Epaphroditus, one thinks, must have had frequent reason to rue the choice he made in Epictetus, if he expected his domestic philosopher to excuse his misdeeds as Anaxarchus did those of Alexander on the occasion above mentioned.
In the year 94 a. d. the emperor Domitian issued a decree expelling all philosophers from Rome—an easily explainable proceeding on his part if there were any large number of them who, in the words of Epictetus, were able “to look tyrants steadily in the face.” Epictetus must have by this time obtained his freedom and set up for himself as a professor of philosophy, for we find him, in consequence of this decree, betaking himself to Nicopolis, a city of Epirus. Here he lived and taught to a venerable age, and here he delivered the discourses which Arrian has reported for us. He lived with great simplicity, and is said to have had no servant or other inmate of his house until he hired a nurse for an infant which was about to be exposed, according to the practice of those days when it was desired to check the inconvenient growth of a family, and which Epictetus rescued and brought up. The date of his death is unknown.
And now, reader, I will take my leave of you with Arrian’s farewell salutation to Lucius Gellius, which, literally translated, is Be strong. If you need it, I know no teacher better able to make or keep you so than Epictetus. At any rate, to give him a fair chance of doing what it is in him to do for English-speaking men and women is something I have regarded as a sort of duty, a discharge of obligation for his infinite service to myself; which done to the utmost of my powers, the fewest forewords are the best.
T. W. R.
FOOTNOTES
[1] The Encheiridion of Epictetus, Translated into English by T. W. Rolleston. Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co., 1881.
[2] Epicteti Dissertationum ab Arriano Digestarum Libri IV. et ex Deperditis Sermonibus Fragmenta. Post Io. Uptoni aliorumque curas, denuo ad Codicum M Storum fidem recensuit, Latina Versione, Adnotationibus, Indicibus illustravit Johannes Schweighäuser, Lipsiæ. MDCCXCIX.
Epicteti Manuale et Cebetis Tabula Græce et Latine. Schw. MDCCXCVIII.
There are two excellent English translations of the whole extant works of Epictetus—one by Mrs. Carter, published in the last century, the other by the late George Long, M. A. (Bohn Series), to both of which, but especially the latter, I desire to record my great obligations.