The Teaching of Epictetus. Epictetus

ὕλας μὴ θαυμάσῃ.

17

Note that in this passage “God” and “the Gods” and “the Divine” are all synonymous terms.

18

Or “of names.”

19

Some texts add “such as Good or Evil.”

20

Apparently a proverb, which maybe paralleled in its present application by Luther’s “Pecca fortiter.”

21

A complex or conjunctive proposition is one which contains several assertions so united as to form a single statement which will be false if any one of its parts is false —e. g., “Brutus was the lover and destroyer both of Cæsar and of his country.” The disjunctive is when alternative propositions are made, as “Pleasure is either good or bad, or neither good nor bad.”

22

I have followed Lord Shaftesbury’s explanation of this passage, which the other commentators have given up as corrupt. It seems clear that whether the passage can stand exactly in the form in which we have it, or not, Lord Shaftesbury’s rendering represents what Epictetus originally conveyed.

23

According to the usual reading, a scornful exclamation – “Thou exhort them!” I have followed the reading recommended by Schw. in his notes, although he does not adopt it in his text.

24

The founder of the Cynic school was Antisthenes, who taught in the gymnasium named the Cynosarges, at Athens; whence the name of his school. Zeller takes this striking chapter to exhibit Epictetus’s “philosophisches Ideal,” the Cynic being the “wahrer Philosoph,” or perfect Stoic. (Phil. d. Gr. iii. S. 752.) This view seems to me no more true than that the missionary or monk is to be considered the ideal Christian. Epictetus takes pains to make it clear that the Cynic is a Stoic with a special and separate vocation, which all Stoics are by no means called upon to take up. Like Thoreau, that modern Stoic, when he went to live at Walden, the Cynic tries the extreme of abnegation in order to demonstrate practically that man has resources within himself which make him equal to any fate that circumstances can inflict.

25

τριβώνιον, a coarse garment especially affected by the Cynics, as also by the early Christian ascetics.

26

“Nor pity.” Upton, in a note on Diss. i. 18. 3. (Schw.), refers to various passages in Epictetus where pity and envy are mentioned together as though they were related emotions, and aptly quotes Virgil (Georg. ii. 499): —

“Aut doluit miserans inopem, aut invidit habenti.”

It will be clear to any careful reader that when Epictetus asserts that certain emotions or acts are unworthy of a man, he constantly means the “man” to be understood as his highest spiritual faculty, his deepest sense of reason, his soul. That we are not to pity or grieve means that that side of us which is related to the divine and eternal is not to be affected by emotions produced by calamities in mere outward and material things. St. Augustine corroborates this view in an interesting passage bearing on the Stoic doctrine of pity (De Civ. Dei. ix. 5; Schw. iv. 132): —

“Misericordiam Cicero non dubitavit appellare virtutem, quam Stoicos inter vitia numerare non pudet, qui tamen, ut docuit liber Epicteti nobilissimi Stoici ex decretis Zenonis et Chrysippi, qui hujus sectæ primas partes habuerunt, hujuscemodi passiones in animum Sapientis admittunt, quem vitiis omnibus liberam esse volunt. Unde fit consequens, ut hæc ipsa non putent vitia, quando Sapienti sic accidunt, ut contra virtutem mentis rationemque nihil possunt.”

The particular utterances of Epictetus here alluded to by St. Augustine must have been contained in some of the lost books of the Dissertations, as nothing like them is to be found explicitly in those which survive, although the latter afford us abundant means for deducing the conclusion which St. Augustine confirms.

27

This cake seems to form a ridiculous anti-climax. But it appears to have been a vexed question in antiquity whether an ascetic philosopher might indulge in this particular luxury (πλακοῦς). Upton quotes Lucian and Diogenes Laertius for instances of this question being propounded, and an affirmative answer given (in one instance by the Cynic, Diogenes). The youth in the text is being addressed as a novice who must not use the freedom of an adept.

28

Upton quotes from Cymbeline: —

“Hath Britain all the sun that shines? Day, night,

Art they not, but in Britain? Prythee, think,

There’s living out of Britain!”

But Epictetus means more than this in his allusion to sun and stars. – See Preface, xxiv. This passage would lead us to suppose that Epictetus believed in a personal existence continued for some time after death. In the end, however, even sun and stars shall vanish. – See ii. 13, 4.

29

Being arrested by Philip’s people, and asked if he were a spy, Diogenes replied, “Certainly I am, O Philip; a spy of thine ill-counsel and folly, who for no necessity canst set thy life and kingdom on the chances of an hour.”

30

According to Upton’s conjecture, these were gladiators famous for bodily strength; and also, one would suspect, for some remarkable calamity.

31

This highly crude view of the Trojan war might have been refuted out of the mouth of Epictetus himself. Evil-doers are not to be allowed their way because they are unable to hurt our souls, but the hurt may be in the cowardice or sloth that will not punish them.

32

By wearing his cloak half falling off, in negligent fashion. Nothing is finer or more characteristic in Epictetus than his angry scorn of the pseudo-Stoics of his day.

33

ἀνάκρινον τὸ δαιμόνιον. The allusion evidently is to the genius or divine spirit by which Socrates felt himself guided.