NOTES
CLEANTHES’ HYMN TO ZEUS.
[1.] Professor Mahaffy, in his Greek Life and Thought, quotes the full text of this noble Hymn, which, he thinks, “would alone redeem the Hellenistic age, as it stands before us, from the charge of mere artificiality and pedantry.”
[2.] ἰῆς μίμημα λαχόντες μοῦνον. This is Zeller’s reading, but not Professor Mahaffy’s who has ἑνὸς μίμημα.
BOOK I.
Chapter I.
[1.] “Enter by the door” (cf. S. John, x. 1). The parallelisms in thought and expression between Epictetus and the New Testament have often been noticed, and the reader will discover many others, to which I have not thought it necessary to draw attention.
[2.] “Conceit:” οἴησις, Einbildung.
[3.] “To be elated:” ἐπαίρεσθαι. One might translate, “to be puffed up,” except that that expression is only used in a bad sense, and one may be “elated” in anything that is truly of the nature of the good. The Stoics distinguished between χαρά, joy, and ἡδονή, pleasure; not rejecting or despising the former.