The Teaching of Epictetus Part 20

CHAPTER I.

1. "Enter by the door" (_cf._ S. John, x. 1). The parallelisms in thought and expression between Epictetus and the New Testament have often been noticed, and the reader will discover many others, to which I have not thought it necessary to draw attention.

2. "Conceit:" ???s??, _Einbildung_.

3. "To be elated:" ?pa??es?a?. One might translate, "to be puffed up,"

except that that expression is only used in a bad sense, and one may be "elated" in anything that is truly of the nature of the good. The Stoics distinguished between ?a??, joy, and ?d???, pleasure; not rejecting or despising the former.

Chapter II.

1. t? ?? e?s?? ?f' ???, t? d? ??? ?f' ???. A fundamental distinction in the Epictetean system, which he sometimes expresses by the phrases, t? ??te?a and t? t?? ?????-things that are our own and things that belong to others; or t? ?d?a and t? ????t??a-things that are our proper concern, and things that are alien to us.

2. On the Mons Palatinus in Rome there stood a temple to Fever. Upton quotes from Gruter, p. xcvii., an interesting inscription to this divinity: Febri. Divae. Febri. Sanctae. Febri. Magnae. Camilla. Amata. Pro.

Filio. Male. Affecto. P.

Chapter III.

1. There is excellent MS. authority for this reading of the pa.s.sage, which, however, is not Schweighauser's. The latter reads: "Be content with them, and pray to the G.o.ds."

2. "Steward of the winds." A quotation from Homer, _Od._ x. 21.

Chapter IV.

1. "Through not being dazzled," etc. ?? t?? ??a? ? ?a??s?.

Chapter VI.

1. Note that in this pa.s.sage "G.o.d" and "the G.o.ds" and "the Divine" are all synonymous terms.

2. Or "of names."

3. Some texts add "such as Good or Evil."

CHAPTER VII.

1. Apparently a proverb, which maybe paralleled in its present application by Luther's "Pecca fort.i.ter."

2. A complex or conjunctive proposition is one which contains several a.s.sertions so united as to form a single statement which will be false if any one of its parts is false-_e.g._, "Brutus was the lover and destroyer both of Caesar and of his country." The disjunctive is when alternative propositions are made, as "Pleasure is either good or bad, or neither good nor bad."

3. I have followed Lord Shaftesbury's explanation of this pa.s.sage, which the other commentators have given up as corrupt. It seems clear that whether the pa.s.sage can stand exactly in the form in which we have it, or not, Lord Shaftesbury's rendering represents what Epictetus originally conveyed.

4. According to the usual reading, a scornful exclamation-"_Thou_ exhort them!" I have followed the reading recommended by Schw. in his notes, although he does not adopt it in his text.

CHAPTER VIII.

1. The founder of the Cynic school was Antisthenes, who taught in the gymnasium named the Cynosarges, at Athens; whence the name of his school. Zeller takes this striking chapter to exhibit Epictetus's "philosophisches Ideal," the Cynic being the "wahrer Philosoph," or perfect Stoic. (Phil. d. Gr. iii. S. 752.) This view seems to me no more true than that the missionary or monk is to be considered the ideal Christian. Epictetus takes pains to make it clear that the Cynic is a Stoic with a special and separate vocation, which all Stoics are by no means called upon to take up. Like Th.o.r.eau, that modern Stoic, when he went to live at Walden, the Cynic tries the extreme of abnegation in order to demonstrate practically that man has resources within himself which make him equal to any fate that circ.u.mstances can inflict.

2. t???????, a coa.r.s.e garment especially affected by the Cynics, as also by the early Christian ascetics.

3. "Nor pity." Upton, in a note on _Diss._ i. 18. 3. (Schw.), refers to various pa.s.sages in Epictetus where pity and envy are mentioned together as though they were related emotions, and aptly quotes Virgil (_Georg._ ii. 499):-

"Aut doluit miserans inopem, aut invidit habenti."

It will be clear to any careful reader that when Epictetus a.s.serts that certain emotions or acts are unworthy of a man, he constantly means the "man" to be understood as his highest spiritual faculty, his deepest sense of reason, his soul. That we are not to pity or grieve means that that side of us which is related to the divine and eternal is not to be affected by emotions produced by calamities in mere outward and material things. St. Augustine corroborates this view in an interesting pa.s.sage bearing on the Stoic doctrine of pity (_De Civ. Dei._ ix. 5; _Schw._ iv.

132):-

"Misericordiam Cicero non dubitavit appellare virtutem, quam Stoicos inter vitia numerare non pudet, qui tamen, ut docuit liber Epicteti n.o.bilissimi Stoici ex decretis Zenonis et Chrysippi, qui hujus sectae primas partes habuerunt, hujuscemodi pa.s.siones in animum Sapientis admittunt, quem vitiis omnibus liberam esse volunt. Unde fit consequens, ut haec ipsa non putent vitia, quando Sapienti sic accidunt, ut contra virtutem mentis rationemque nihil possunt."

The particular utterances of Epictetus here alluded to by St. Augustine must have been contained in some of the lost books of the _Dissertations_, as nothing like them is to be found explicitly in those which survive, although the latter afford us abundant means for deducing the conclusion which St. Augustine confirms.

4. This cake seems to form a ridiculous anti-climax. But it appears to have been a vexed question in antiquity whether an ascetic philosopher might indulge in this particular luxury (p?a????). Upton quotes Lucian and Diogenes Laertius for instances of this question being propounded, and an affirmative answer given (in one instance by the Cynic, Diogenes). The youth in the text is being addressed as a novice who must not use the freedom of an adept.

5. Upton quotes from Cymbeline:-

"Hath Britain all the sun that shines? Day, night, Art they not, but in Britain? Prythee, think, There's living out of Britain!"

But Epictetus means more than this in his allusion to sun and stars.-See Preface, xxiv. This pa.s.sage would lead us to suppose that Epictetus believed in a personal existence continued for some time after death. In the end, however, even sun and stars shall vanish.-See ii.

13, 4.

6. Being arrested by Philip's people, and asked if he were a spy, Diogenes replied, "Certainly I am, O Philip; a spy of thine ill-counsel and folly, who for no necessity canst set thy life and kingdom on the chances of an hour."

7. According to Upton's conjecture, these were gladiators famous for bodily strength; and also, one would suspect, for some remarkable calamity.

8. This highly crude view of the Trojan war might have been refuted out of the mouth of Epictetus himself. Evil-doers are not to be allowed their way because they are unable to hurt our souls, but the hurt may be in the cowardice or sloth that will not punish them.

9. By wearing his cloak half falling off, in negligent fashion. Nothing is finer or more characteristic in Epictetus than his angry scorn of the pseudo-Stoics of his day.

10. ????????? t? da??????. The allusion evidently is to the genius or divine spirit by which Socrates felt himself guided.

11. Crates was a disciple of Diogenes. His wife was named Hipparchia.

Upton quotes Menander (_apud Diog. L._), "Thou wilt walk about with me in a cloak as once did his wife with Crates the Cynic."

12. Danaus, father of the fifty Danaidae. aeolus is mentioned in _Od._ x.

as having six sons and six daughters.

13. t?ape??a? p??a?????. _Il._ xxi. 69.

14. That is, he capped the quotation by quoting the following line (_Il._ ii. 24, 25). Not a very striking intellectual effort; but Epictetus evidently considered it a meritorious thing to know Homer well enough to quote him in one's sleep, and he was right.

15. From a poem of Cleanthes.

BOOK II.