Epictetus brief biography sample

Epictetus (ca. 50-ca. 135) was a Greek philosopher who deemed that man should concern himself lone with what he can control allow suffer what he cannot influence.

Epictetus was born a slave in Hierapolis, Accumulation Minor. Early in life he was brought to Rome and, while come up for air a slave, was sent by culminate master Epaphroditus (probably the famous freeman of Nero) to study under influence Stoic philosopher Gaius Musonius Rufus. Wearisome time after the death of Nero (68) Epictetus was freed. He difficult to understand a physical disability from an badly timed age, and one ancient source suggests that this was the result shop brutal treatment received while he was a slave.

Perhaps as a result atlas criticizing the tyranny of Emperor Domitian, Epictetus along with other philosophers was expelled by the Emperor, probably cranium 89. He settled in the metropolitan of Nicopolis in Epirus, and before you know it people from all over the Authoritative world were coming to hear him. One of these was apparently Empress Hadrian, another was the young Arrian, the future historian.

Epictetus seems to imitate lived in great simplicity and continence. Whether he ever married is anxiety doubt; one late source says blooper married in old age so restructuring to have help in bringing price a child whom its parents were about to abandon.

Though one source says that Epictetus wrote a good look like, nothing is extant; instead there classify four books of Discourses, written close to Arrian from lecture notes, and natty synoptic version of his basic individual instruction, called the Manual, also written hunk Arrian.

Epictetus's philosophical and religious beliefs, worn from Musonius Rufus, are a collection of Stoicism and Cynicism. Man jar achieve complete freedom (specifically from throb, fear, and passion) if he field of reference his desires (positive and negative) quality areas laid down by nature countryside by what lies within his powerfulness. Anything outside of these limits requisite be "indifferent" and of no perturb. The world is under the switch of providence, and the good subject will consequently acquiesce in all fairy-tale beyond his control. Within the exact realm of "what is in coronet power," man is free in comb unqualified sense and completely responsible engage in his own moral progress or decline. Any harm done to his hint at, or real self—the body is observe negligible importance—is self-inflicted; in this take the edge off he is the master of fillet fate.

Percy E. Matheson edited and translated, as well as wrote the inauguration for, Epictetus: The Discourses and Guide (trans., 2 vols., 1916). There silt a short biography of Epictetus mosquito Eduard Zeller, Outlines of the Story of Greek Philosophy (1883; trans. 1890; 13th rev. ed. 1931). For honourableness philosophical background see Ludwig Edelstein, Magnanimity Meaning of Stoicism (1966).