Epictetus

Based on Wikipedia: Epictetus

The Slave Who Taught Emperors How to Think

A crippled slave, living in Rome under the tyrannical Emperor Nero, somehow managed to become one of the most influential philosophers in human history. His ideas would shape the thinking of a Roman emperor, French Enlightenment thinkers, and even American prisoners of war in Vietnam. His name was Epictetus, and his central insight was disarmingly simple: you cannot control what happens to you, but you can always control how you respond.

The irony is almost too perfect. Here was a man who had no control over the most basic facts of his existence—his freedom, his body, his very name—and yet he built an entire philosophical system around the idea of personal responsibility and inner freedom. It's as if the universe deliberately created the exact circumstances needed to prove his point.

A Name That Meant "Property"

We don't actually know what Epictetus's parents called him. The name "Epictetus" isn't really a name at all—it's a Greek word meaning "acquired" or "gained." The philosopher Plato had used this same term in his writings to describe property that someone adds to their inherited estate. So when we say "Epictetus," we're essentially calling him "The Purchased One" or "The Acquisition."

Think about that for a moment. This man who would influence centuries of philosophical thought is remembered by a label that marked him as someone else's property.

He was born around 50 AD in Hierapolis, a city in Phrygia—what is now Pamukkale in western Turkey. Today, Pamukkale is famous for its stunning white terraces of mineral-rich thermal waters. In Epictetus's time, it was simply where he happened to be born before being transported to Rome as a slave.

A Complicated Social Position

Young Epictetus was enslaved to a man named Epaphroditus, which creates an interesting wrinkle in the story. Epaphroditus was himself a freedman—a former slave who had gained his freedom. But he wasn't just any freedman. He served as personal secretary to Emperor Nero, one of the most notorious rulers in Roman history.

This placed Epictetus in a peculiar social limbo. He was, legally speaking, near the bottom of Roman society—a piece of property with no rights. Yet he had direct access to the highest circles of imperial power through his master's position. He was simultaneously nobody and somebody.

Ancient sources disagree about how Epictetus became disabled. The philosopher Origen, writing in the third century, quoted an earlier writer named Celsus who claimed that Epictetus's master deliberately broke his leg. Another philosopher, Simplicius, writing centuries later, said Epictetus had been disabled since childhood without specifying a cause. Either way, physical limitation became part of his identity—and perhaps sharpened his thinking about what truly matters in life.

Finding Philosophy in Bondage

Something remarkable happened while Epictetus was still enslaved: he became passionate about philosophy. With his master's permission—wealthy Romans often educated their slaves in the liberal arts, as it increased their value and usefulness—he began studying under Musonius Rufus, one of the great Stoic teachers of the age.

Stoicism, the philosophical school Epictetus devoted his life to, had been founded in Athens about three centuries earlier. The name comes from the Stoa Poikile, a painted porch where the original Stoics gathered to discuss ideas. By the time of Epictetus, Stoicism had become the dominant philosophy among Rome's educated classes.

The core Stoic insight is this: life will throw countless situations at you, most of which you cannot control. What you can control is your judgment about those situations. A Stoic trains themselves to distinguish clearly between what is "up to us" and what is not, and to focus all their energy on the former.

For a slave, this distinction wasn't abstract philosophy. It was survival.

Freedom and Exile

When Nero died in 68 AD—by suicide, fleeing from his own guards—the political landscape shifted. Somewhere in the years following, Epictetus gained his freedom. The exact circumstances are lost to history, but freedmen in Rome often purchased their liberty or were manumitted in their masters' wills.

Now a free man, Epictetus began teaching philosophy in Rome. He must have been good at it. He developed a reputation as a compelling speaker who could make his students feel exactly what he wanted them to feel. This wasn't dry lecturing; this was transformation.

But in 93 AD, Emperor Domitian—paranoid and despotic—banished all philosophers from Rome. This was not unusual for Roman emperors. Philosophy had a subversive quality. It encouraged people to think for themselves, to question authority, to find inner sources of validation that didn't depend on the state. Tyrants find such ideas threatening.

Epictetus relocated to Nicopolis, a city in northwestern Greece on the Adriatic coast. The city's name means "Victory City"—it had been founded by Augustus to commemorate his naval victory at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. There, Epictetus established his own school of philosophy.

A School Without Textbooks

Here's something surprising: Epictetus never wrote anything down. Not a single word of his philosophy comes directly from his hand. Everything we have from him was recorded by his student Arrian, who attended his lectures around 108 AD.

Arrian was quite explicit about his method. In the preface to the Discourses, he wrote that "whatever I heard him say I used to write down, word for word, as best I could, endeavouring to preserve it as a memorial, for my own future use, of his way of thinking and the frankness of his speech."

This means the Discourses are lecture notes. They capture Epictetus in the act of teaching—responding to questions, challenging students, telling stories, making jokes. The text has an immediacy and energy that polished philosophical treatises often lack. You can almost hear his voice.

From these lecture notes, Arrian compiled two works: the Discourses (originally eight books, though only four survive) and the Enchiridion, a short handbook summarizing the key teachings. Arrian compared his work to the literature about Socrates—another philosopher who wrote nothing himself and is known entirely through his students' accounts.

The Core Doctrine

Epictetus taught that philosophy is not an intellectual game but a way of life. Knowing the correct theories means nothing if you don't actually live by them. He divided philosophical education into three parts.

First comes application. Before you can explain why lying is wrong, you must simply stop lying. Practice comes before theory.

Second comes understanding reasons. Now you can ask: why shouldn't I lie? What makes honesty important?

Third—and only third—comes logic. This is where you examine the reasoning itself, asking whether your arguments are valid and your conclusions sound.

Most academic philosophers would probably reverse this order, starting with logic. Epictetus was having none of it. Logic matters, he acknowledged, but only because it supports practical living. Philosophy divorced from how you actually conduct yourself is just word games.

His most famous teaching concerned the distinction between what we control and what we don't. We don't control external events—other people's actions, weather, illness, death. We do control our own judgments, desires, and responses. Freedom comes from focusing entirely on what is up to us and accepting everything else with equanimity.

This wasn't passive resignation. Epictetus emphasized rigorous self-discipline and personal responsibility. You are accountable for your actions and reactions. No excuses. The universe may be indifferent, but you are not helpless.

The Student Who Became Emperor

Among those influenced by Epictetus was Marcus Aurelius, who would become Roman emperor in 161 AD. Marcus cited Epictetus repeatedly in his private journal, known today as the Meditations—perhaps the most famous work of Stoic philosophy ever written.

Consider the arc of influence here. A crippled slave, purchased and named as property, develops a philosophical system that profoundly shapes the worldview of one of Rome's greatest emperors. Marcus Aurelius controlled legions, provinces, the fate of millions. Yet he looked to the teachings of an ex-slave for guidance on how to think and live.

The later Emperor Hadrian was reportedly friendly with Epictetus and may have visited his school in Nicopolis to hear him teach. A fictional dialogue between Hadrian and Epictetus became extremely popular in the Middle Ages, translated and adapted repeatedly across European languages. Even if the dialogue wasn't real, it reflected a widespread intuition that this former slave had something important to teach the powerful.

Living Simply to the End

Epictetus practiced what he preached. He lived with almost no possessions. According to one account, his household contained only a mat, a cot, and an earthenware lamp. He remained unmarried for most of his life, living alone.

In his old age, something changed. A friend's child was going to be "exposed"—the Roman practice of abandoning unwanted infants to die. Epictetus adopted the child and raised it, with the help of a woman whose relationship to him remains unclear. The sources don't tell us if they married.

He died around 135 AD. A minor detail from his death became famous: according to the satirist Lucian, an admirer purchased Epictetus's simple oil lamp for 3,000 drachmae—an enormous sum for such a common object. The purchaser presumably hoped some of the philosopher's wisdom might transfer through the possession. It's a very un-Stoic thing to do, and Epictetus probably would have been amused.

The Long Reach of His Ideas

The Enchiridion became one of the most widely read works of classical philosophy. In the sixth century, the Neoplatonist philosopher Simplicius wrote an extensive commentary on it. During the Renaissance, scholars translated it into European vernacular languages. Enlightenment philosophers—Voltaire, Montesquieu, Diderot, Baron d'Holbach—all studied it in their youth.

Blaise Pascal, the French mathematician and philosopher, counted Epictetus among the thinkers he knew best, calling him a "great mind" who understood human duties better than almost anyone.

In the twentieth century, Admiral James Stockdale, held as a prisoner of war in Vietnam for over seven years, credited his survival to Epictetus's teachings. Stockdale had studied the Stoics as a graduate student at Stanford. When he was shot down and captured, he mentally told himself: "I'm leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus."

What Stockdale found in those teachings—and what readers continue to find—is not a formula for easy happiness, but something harder and more valuable: a way to maintain dignity and purpose under conditions you cannot control. The crippled slave had learned that lesson in the most difficult possible classroom, and then devoted his life to teaching it to others.

The Paradox of Inner Freedom

There's something almost paradoxical about Epictetus's legacy. He insisted that external things don't matter—yet his oil lamp sold for a fortune. He wrote nothing—yet his words echo through centuries. He was property—yet he taught emperors.

Maybe that's the point. The very contradictions in his life demonstrate his philosophy. What seemed to be limitations became irrelevant to what he actually accomplished. His lameness didn't prevent him from teaching; his slavery didn't prevent him from becoming free; his lack of writing didn't prevent his ideas from spreading worldwide.

He took the name that marked him as acquired property and transformed it into a symbol of the one thing no one could ever own: his mind.

That's the essence of what Stoicism offers, and why, nearly two thousand years later, people still turn to the teachings of this remarkable Greek slave who refused to be defined by his circumstances.