BIOGRAPHY
Epictetus
was born a slave in Hierapolis, a small town in Phrygia, Asia Minor (in
present-day Turkey). His master was Epaphroditus, a member of Emperor
Nero's personal staff in Rome.
As was often done at that time, Epaphroditus saw to it that Epictetus
had a good education, sending him to study with the Roman Stoic,
Rufus. Founded by Zeno of Citium (336-265 B.C.),
the Stoic school
received its name from the columned "porch" stoa, where Zeno had taught.
The Stoics
held that human life should be lived in harmony with nature, regardless
of what life may bring: a reassuring doctrine for a slave such as Epictetus.
But Epictetus did not remain a slave, gaining his freedom sometime after
the death of Nero in A.D. 68. He began to teach until A.D. 89 or 93 when
Emperor Domitian expelled all the philosophers from Rome.
Domitian seems to have been especially angry with the Stoics
for teaching that sovereignty comes from God and is for the benefit of
the people. (Epictetus' reported claim that he had the same regard for
the emperor as for his water-pot could not have helped.) Epictetus moved
to Nicropolis in Epirus (northwestern Greece), where he established a
thriving Stoic
school and lived a simple life with few material goods. As an old man
he married so that he could adopt a child who otherwise would have been
"exposed," that is, left to die. Those whom he taught described him as
a humble, charitable man of great moral and religious devotion.
Epictetus
never wrote
anything, but one of his admiring students, Arrian, composed eight Discourses
based on Epictetus' lectures, along with a summary of the great man's
thought, the Encheiridion (or Manual). The Encheiridion
emphasizes the need for acceptance of what life brings. Epictetus points
out that we cannot change events that happen to us, but we can change
our attitude toward those events. To accomplish this and achieve the good
life, we must go through three stages. First, we must order our desires
and overcome our fears. Next, we must perform our duties--in whatever
role fate has given us. Finally, we must think clearly and judge accurately.
Only then will we be successful in ordering our desires and performing
our duties; only then will we gain inner tranquillity.
Despite Emperor Domitian's condemnation, Stoicism
had a special appeal to the Roman mind. In the austere moral emphasis
of Epictetus, with his concomitant stress on self-control and superiority
to pain, the Romans found an ideal for the wise man, while the Stoic
description of natural law provided a basis for Romans law. One might
say that the pillars of republican Rome
tended to be Stoical, even if some Romans had
never heard of Stoic.