Epictetus Study Group

Greek Learning Greek
21

I sent an email to annis.

thanks,

Nick

22

I was just reviewing Epictetus. I pulled down my red Long and Sedley and they seem to rank Epictetus low among Stoics. They rank Chrysippus number one and below him Zeno, Cleanthes, Sphaerus, Dogenes of Babylon, Antipater, Panaetius, Posidonius, but don’t even bother to mention Epictetus in their introduction. Indeed, they give him maybe 5% of of the space they give Chrysippus. And I remember when I studied Stoicism in some fair bit of detail Chrysippus was pretty important. I don’t remember much discussion of Epictetus. Anyway, I was just thinking about catching up with you guys and had to refresh my memories of Epictetus and this was the first thing I noticed. I draw no conclusions, but I want to ask what the attraction was of this particular text?

23

First, because there is a text at all. The longest continuous text from any early Stoic is Chrysippus’ Hymn to Zeus. After that it’s only fragments and quotations from other authors.

Second, while Epictetus can’t match Chrysippus’ foundational role in Stoic philosophy, his works have been the main introduction for quite some time. The Enchiridion in particular has been widely read for centuries and centuries.

24

Excellent. Thank you very much.

25

I posted a message about this on the site for the group as well but in case people are more likely to see it here or there are new people interested in joining, I thought I’d post a message here as well. The Epictetus study group has basically come to a halt, but I’m still interested in continuing it in the new year and I was wondering if anybody else is also interested. And if there are any suggestions for changing the format, which so far has been everybody posts a translation of the week’s passage and we discuss, we could discuss that as well.