Chapter IV.
[1.] Briefly, the three divisions seem to be Action, Character, and Judgment. The last is to be approached through training in logic, in the penetration of fallacies, etc., by which means a man is to arrive at such an inward and vital conviction of the truth that he can never for a moment be taken off his guard by the delusion of Appearance.
[2.] Passions, passionless, τὰ πάθη, ἀπαθής.—See [Index] of Philosophic Terms.
Chapter V.
[1.] Euripides.—Musonius Rufus, the teacher of Epictetus, is reported to have said, “Take the chance of dying nobly when thou canst, lest after a little death indeed come to thee, but a noble death no more.”
[2.] This phrase of the “open door” occurs frequently in Epictetus, usually when, as here, he is telling the average non-philosophic man that it is unmanly to complain of a life which he can at any time relinquish. The philosopher has no need of such exhortation, for he does not complain, and as for death, is content to wait God’s time. But the Stoics taught that the arrival of this time might be indicated by some disaster or affliction which rendered a natural and wholesome life impossible. Self-destruction was in such cases permissible, and is recorded to have been adopted by several leaders of the Stoics, generally when old age had begun to render them a burden to their friends.
[3.] Nay, thou shalt exist, etc.—This is the sense given by Zeller’s punctuation. Schweighäuser’s text would be rendered, “Thou shalt not exist, but something else will,” etc. Upton changes the text (on his own authority) by transposing an οὐκ. “Thou shalt exist, but as something else, whereof the universe has now no need.”
[4.] This does not appear to have been the law in Epictetus’s time, for he himself was educated while a slave. But it was a common provision in antique states.
[5.] The ceremony in manumitting a slave.