by Epictetus
His influence has been extensive and has not yet waned. Hadrian was his friend, and, in the next generation, Marcus Aurelius was his ardent disciple. Celsus, Gellius, and Lucian lauded him, and Galen wrote a special treatise in his defence. His merits were recognized by Christians like Chrysostom, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Augustine, while Origen rated him in some respects even above Plato. His Manual, with a few simple changes, principally in the proper names, was adapted by two different Christian ascetics as a rule and guide of monastic life.
In modern times his vogue started rather slowly with translations by Perotti and Politian, but vernacular versions began to appear in the sixteenth century, and at the end of that century and the first part of the subsequent one, Epictetus was one of the most powerful forces in the movement of Neo-Stoicism, especially under the protagonists Justus Lipsius and Bishop Guillaume Du Vair. His work and the essays of Montaigne were the principal secular readings of Pascal, and it was with Epictetus and his disciple Marcus Aurelius that the Earl of Shaftesbury “was most thoroughly conversant.” Men as different as Touissant L’Ouverture and Landor, Frederick the Great and Leopardi, have been among his admirers. The number of editions and new printings of his works, or of portions or translations of the same averages considerably more than one for each year since the invention of printing. In the twentieth century, through the inclusion of Crossley’s Golden Sayings of Epictetus in Charles William Eliot’s Harvard Series of Classics, and of the Manual in Carl Hilty’s Glück, of which two works upwards of three hundred and fifty thousand copies had, at a recent date, been sold, it may safely be asserted that more copies of portions of his work have been printed in the last two decades than ever existed all told from his own day down to that time.
In concluding one can hardly refrain from translating a portion of the sincere and stirring passage in which Justus Lipsius, a great man and a distinguished scholar, paid Epictetus the tribute of his homage:
“So much for Seneca; another brilliant star arises, Epictetus, his second in time, but not in merit; comparable with him in the weight, if not in the bulk, of his writings; superior in his life. He was a man who relied wholly upon himself and God, but not on Fortune. In origin low and servile, in body lame and feeble, and in mind most exalted, and brilliant among the lights of every age. ...
“But few of his works remain: the Encheiridion, assuredly a noble piece, and as it were the soul of Stoic moral philosophy; besides that, the Discourses, which he delivered on the streets, in his house, and in the school, collected and arranged by Arrian. Nor are these all extant. ... But, so help me God, what a keen and lofty spirit in them! a soul aflame, and burning with love of the honourable! There is nothing in Greek their like, unless I am mistaken; I mean with such notable vigour and fire. A novice or one unacquainted with true philosophy he will hardly stir or affect, but when a man has made some progress or is already far advanced, it is amazing how Epictetus stirs him up, and though he is always touching some tender spot, yet he gives delight also. ... There is no one who better influences and shapes a good mind. I never read that old man without a stirring of my soul within me, and, as with Homer, I think the more of him each time I re-read him, for he seems always new; and even after I have returned to him I feel that I ought to return to him yet once more.”
LIST OF WORKS CITED
H. von Arnim, article “Epiktetos,” in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopädie 6, cols. 126–31
E. V. Arnold, article “Epictetus,” in Hastings’ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics 6, pf.
R. Asmus, Quaestiones Epicteteae,Freiburg i. B. 1888
R. Bentley’s critical notes on Arrian’s “Discourses of Epictetus,” Trans. Amer. Philol. Assoc. 1921, 53, p–52 (by W. A. Oldfather)
A. Bonhöffer, Epictet und die Stoa, Stuttgart 1890; Die Ethik des Stoikers Epictet, Stuttgart 1894; Epiktet und das Neue Testament, Giessen 1911
T. Colardeau, Etude sur Epictète, Paris 1903
O. Halbauer, De diatribis Epicteti, Leipzig 1911
K. Hartmann, “Arrian und Epiktet,” Neue Jahrb., 1905, 15, p–75
Fr.M. J. Iagrange, “La philosophie religieuse d’Epictète,” Revue Biblique 1912, pff.; 192ff.
J. Lipsius, Manuductio ad Stoicam philosophiam, I, xix, p–64, ed. Antwerp 1604; IV, pf., ed. Wesel 1625
C. Martha, Les moralistes sous l’empire romain, philosophes et poètes, Paris 1865, and often reprinted
P. E. More, Hellenistic Philosophies, Princeton 1923, “Epictetus,” p–171
R. Mucke, Zu Arrians und Epiktets Sprachgebrauch, Nordhausen 1887
B. Pascal, Entretien avec de Saci sur Epictète et Montaigne. First published in authentic form in M. Havet, Pensées de Pascal, Paris 1852, and frequently since then.
R. Renner, Das Kind: ein Gleichnismittel des Epiktets, Munich 1905
L. Zanta, La renaissance du stoicisme au xvi siècle, Paris 1914. La traduction française du Manuel d’Epictète d’André de Rivaudeau, Paris 1914
E. Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen, III.1 (Leipzig 1909), p–81; III.2 (1902), p–14
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