EPICTETUS.


Very little is known of the life of Epictetus. It is said that he was a
native of Hierapolis in Phrygia, a town between the Maeander and a
branch of the Maeander named the Lycus. Hierapolis is mentioned in the
epistle of Paul to the people of Colossae (Coloss. iv., 13); from which
it has been concluded that there was a Christian church in Hierapolis in
the time of the apostle. The date of the birth of Epictetus is unknown.
The only recorded fact of his early life is that he was a slave in Rome,
and his master was Epaphroditus, a profligate freedman of the Emperor
Nero. There is a story that the master broke his slave's leg by
torturing him; but it is better to trust to the evidence of Simplicius,
the commentator on the Encheiridion, or Manual, who says that Epictetus
was weak in body and lame from an early age. It is not said how he
became a slave; but it has been asserted in modern times that the
parents sold the child. I have not, however, found any authority for
this statement.

It may be supposed that the young slave showed intelligence, for his
master sent or permitted him to attend the lectures of C. Musonius
Rufus, an eminent Stoic philosopher. It may seem strange that such a
master should have wished to have his slave made into a philosopher; but
Garnier, the author of a "Mémoire sur les Ouvrages d'Epictète," explains
this matter very well in a communication to Schweighaeuser. Garnier
says: "Epictetus, born at Hierapolis of Phrygia of poor parents, was
indebted apparently for the advantages of a good education to the whim,
which was common at the end of the Republic and under the first
emperors, among the great of Rome to reckon among their numerous slaves
grammarians, poets, rhetoricians, and philosophers, in the same way as