Book description
Epictetus, a Greek stoic and freed slave, ran a thriving philosophy
school in Nicropolis in the early second century AD. His animated
discussions were celebrated for their rhetorical wizardry and were
written down by Arrian, his most famous pupil. Together with the
Enchiridion, a manual of his main ideas, and the fragments collected
here,
The Discourses
argue that happiness lies in learning to perceive exactly what is in
our power to change and what is not, and in embracing our fate to live
in harmony with god and nature. In this personal, practical guide to the
ethics of stoicism and moral self-improvement, Epictetus tackles
questions of freedom and imprisonment, illness and fear, family,
friendship and love, and leaves an intriguing document of daily life in
the classical world. Epictetus (c. 55 135 AD) was a teacher and
Greco-Roman philosopher. Originally a slave from Hierapolis in Anatolia
(modern Turkey), he was owned for a time by a prominent freedman at the
court of the emperor Nero. After gaining his freedom he moved to
Nicopolis on the Adriatic coast of Greece and opened a school of
philosophy there. His informal lectures (the Discourses) were
transcribed and published by his student Arrian, who also composed a
digest of Epictetus' teaching known as the Manual (or Enchiridion).
