A Rhetorical Wizard: Epictetus and the Second Sophistic

Epictetus’s negative views of rhetoric and the cultural baggage that the young men attending his school brought with them have always been evident, but his own assimilation of that culture has been less obvious and never properly studied. It is possible that if we were able to disclose to him the rhetorical characteristics of his prose and the ways in which he had absorbed the literary culture that surrounded him, he would still sneer. The spontaneous notes of Arrian, however, reveal what is behind his apparent contempt. Many of Epictetus’s students came to his school after learning rhetoric.¹ They had practiced the technique of declamation, attended the speeches of sophists, and participated in the general frenzy at such performances. Their skills in writing and speaking had improved, but they had come to Nicopolis for a different type of education, one focused on content and not form. Defining himself in contrast to the rhetoric of his time was crucial for Epictetus, who wanted to leave an enduring, life-giving impression on his students. In one essay he refers to two different types of teachers, a sophist and a philosopher: “A teacher who will teach him [the student] how to live? No, fool, one who will teach him how to speak well. That is what he admires you for. Listen to him, what does he say? ‘This person writes with the greatest art, more elegantly than Dio.’”²

The comparison was well taken. In this essay Epictetus refers to Dio as a champion of rhetoric with a huge following.³ He may not have known that, during his exile, Dio claimed that people considered him a philosopher, not a rhetor, and asked him to talk about good, evil, and the duties of man.⁴ Or perhaps Epictetus was not interested in this side of the writer.

The rivalry between rhetoric and philosophy goes back at least as far as Plato, who knew rhetoric and took advantage of it but presented it as the manipulative art of persuasion. Education was at the center of this polemic.⁵ In the classical period, as in the second century CE, sophists and philosophers each claimed that they knew how to create the best citizen. The art of persuasion was regarded as a skill that could provide pleasure and assure success in society but could not impart real knowledge. By contrast, philosophy allowed its devotees to reach insight, acquire knowledge of reality, and gain inner peace, thereby transforming their lives. In general, many writers of the Roman Empire upheld the superiority of philosophy over rhetoric but continued to cultivate the latter, which appeared to have gained the upper hand in society. We shall see that Epictetus scorned literary form to a point, attributing relative importance to books containing past doctrines. He was adamant in his hatred of rhetoric’s flamboyant manifestations, epideiktikos. He cited Socrates, who in Apology 17c had said that at his age he could not present himself to his audience fashioning discourses like a young man.⁶ Epictetus considered rhetoric “an elegant little art of choosing little words,⁷ joining them together and reading or reciting them to a public and saying in the middle of the reading ‘by God, there are not many people who can understand this.’”⁸ Yet, apparently, rhetoric was not all negative. It had one redeeming quality that Epictetus advised his students to imitate: the use of incessant practice to improve performance, that is, hard work.⁹ The rhetor was not content merely to work on and memorize his speech, but he went further, continuing to prepare because he aimed at perfection and feared his audience. Through his constant training he became better than others, and young aspiring philosophers could improve their understanding by persistent application. Of course, Epictetus did not approve of the reason for the relentless practice of the success-seeking rhetor and painted a pathetic vignette: “If he is praised, he leaves all puffed up, but if he is laughed to scorn his inflated little conceit sinks down deflated.”¹⁰ One of the reasons for his aversion was that sophists solicited an audience and advertised their art. A philosopher did not need to invite listeners.¹¹ He was not looking for applause or acclamations. Addressing the main interlocutor of this essay, Epictetus says, “Do you need to set up a thousand chairs, to invite auditors, and be dressed in an elegant robe or gown and on a podium describe the death of Achilles? I beg you by the gods, stop dishonoring such famous names and deeds as much as you can.” We shall see that Epictetus’s attitude toward mythology was complex. Here he objects to its empty overuse by rhetors.

The feverish atmosphere accompanying sophistic performances had started to contaminate the delivery of philosophical discourse.¹² Gellius reports the indignant comments of Musonius, who condemned applause, trite comments, loud shouts, unrestrained praise, and gesticulations at a philosopher’s lecture.¹³ Those who were enchanted by the rhythm of the words were not captured by their moral content, according to him, but were hearing the presentation as if it were a flute player’s recital. A listener at a philosophical address could not help but have a gamut of powerful feelings. The greatest admiration should not rouse applause and words of praise; silence was the best response. Plutarch also testifies that in his time all lectures had become rowdy spectacles. He contrasts the performance of a philosopher with panegyrics “on vomiting or fever or even a kitchen pot” (44f). His essay On Listening to Lectures is an educational work poised between rhetoric and philosophy.¹⁴ Silence, remarks Plutarch, is a safe adornment for the young man, who in listening should not get overexcited (39c). A harmonious style that resembles singing gives way only to pleasure and entertainment; it needs to be stripped from the lecture so that its content can be revealed, and so that the hearer realizes he has not come to a theater or a music hall. When a philosopher speaks inside a hall, the clamor and shouting is such that people outside cannot understand who is being applauded—a flute player, perhaps, or a dancer? (46c). Plutarch concludes that one must acquire a philosophical mind, not a mind that is sophistic or an attitude that concentrates on mere information (48d).

Here I focus on Epictetus’s use of rhetoric and on what he seems to owe to the prevailing practices of his time. In his writings we need to consider closely the dialogic parts, his solo performances, his use of the argumentative technique of antithesis (very popular in the so-called Third Sophistic), and his reliance on speeches of impersonation. In other words, when reading the Discourses, we need to think more directly about whose voices we are “hearing.”

Arrian, who at times struggled with keeping pace and with transitions from one thought to the next, is present behind the whole text.¹⁵ Epictetus’s voice is one of restraining, teaching, advising, and reprimanding. He is the authority that nobody challenges, even if the outside world sometimes attempts to confront him. Arrian’s presentation gives us a much richer sense of the classroom than we have with Musonius, where dialogue appears only to a very limited degree. The texts of Musonius were compiled by a student who only cared for the voice of the philosopher.¹⁶ As a consequence, questions are sprinkled very sparingly throughout Musonius’s conversations, which are mostly monologues. Essays 9 and 16 each start with a question that appears to be an excuse for a single discussion. Text 5 seems to be a dialogue: Musonius asks questions, but short answers are given in indirect discourse and are not fundamental to the development of the conversation.¹⁷

The Discourses of Epictetus display more variety, vividness, and spontaneity than those of Musonius. It has been observed that he “engaged his interlocutor in brilliantly challenging dialogues.”¹⁸ In a useful publication, Barbara Wehner studied the dialogic structure of the Discourses in connection with the genre of diatribe, but her excessive distinctions among dialogues do not offer many general conclusions.¹⁹ On close inspection, it seems that the text of Epictetus does not actually include many dialogues that show real interactions between himself and an interlocutor or a student.²⁰There are, of course, exceptions. A full dialogue is present, for instance, in Diss. 4.6, with both participants discussing their respective positions. This piece is unusual because in it the interlocutor, who does not want to be pitied by others, exposes his point of view at length. He has invested much effort: listening to philosophers, learning geometry and syllogisms, and reading, writing, and reflecting on arguments, all however without paying attention to important values. Epictetus’s sharp final rebuke is the result of his full understanding of the situation of his interlocutor.²¹ In Diss. 3.23 Epictetus himself utters most of the exchange, but in some dialogic parts the protagonist, a sophist in search of praise, manifests his worry that his audience was limited. Interestingly, many voices can be heard here. In 3.23.10–11, after Epictetus remarks that the orator was dejected one day because his audience did not applaud, the dialogue that follows seems to be uttered by another person, who responds to the sophist’s questions by reassuring him how marvelous his performance was. Do we see here a sign that Arrian was confused in reporting the event? Perhaps the same person (or maybe the sophist himself, asking questions and responding internally) later intervenes to remark that the audience had been huge, bigger than that of Dio, “five hundred, nonsense, it was a thousand at least.” We also encounter one-line exchanges between the interlocutor and members of his audience who praise his rhetorical performance and point to the large number of spectators. These, too, are false dialogues in which the philosopher performs as a kind of ventriloquist. The notes of Arrian must be responsible. In a different section, words of admonition that a student might repeat to himself are uttered by Epictetus.²² He does not address the young man directly but becomes an external voice. Generally, questions abound in the Discourses, often in rapid escalation, but although they may appear ambiguous at first sight, it is the philosopher himself who responds to them. In 1.12.18–23 the “dialogues” are along these lines: “Is someone dissatisfied with his parents? Let him be a bad son and complain. Is someone dissatisfied with his children? Let him be a bad father.” This is a “dialogue” consisting of only one voice, that of Epictetus, although the responses have sometimes been represented visually as if they were uttered by a different person.²³

We may wonder why the Discourses contains so many instances of Epictetus giving solo performances in which Stoic philosophy rings true. This is one reason why we should not treat the Discourses as a complete work, to which its author had given the final touches. Rather, these are the notes Arrian made as he was listening to the philosopher’s message. He may have chosen to omit real dialogues containing the contributions of students that, in his opinion, did not deserve to be immortalized.²⁴ Moreover, although Arrian was able to record the Discourses as they exist now, he would have needed some short-cuts in doing so, and the omission of unnecessary details would help him. Ignoring the objections and requests for explanation of students would have allowed him to keep up the pace of the narrative and to avoid becoming mired in minutiae. The formula phesi (he says) appears in dialogues that are conducted mainly in Epictetus’s persona. These are not completely soliloquies, however, and the presence of an interlocutor is at least signaled. Was Arrian behind all that?²⁵

Evaluations of Epictetus’s supposed writing style were negative for many years following the trenchant judgment of Fronto, who maintained that neither the philosopher’s rough and vulgar style nor his life and social condition depended on a conscious choice but were instead the consequence of his initial life circumstances.²⁶ Views have changed, and some recent scholars have remarked that Epictetus was a master rhetorician, a rhetorical wizard. If, as I have argued, we have not a polished text written by Epictetus but Arrian’s record of his oral teaching, this character is all the more marked. Rhetoric was certainly part of the education he received, even though he scorned the fanfare, display of vanity, acclamations, and large boisterous crowds of the rhetorical epideixeis of his time, in which the ludic elements appeared to be the goal.²⁷ At a time when the Second Sophistic was raging, Epictetus cherished different kinds of performances: those that were intense, introspective, and that had as their goal to change lives.²⁸

Scholarly attention has so far focused only on Epictetus’s debts to Socrates and Plato, particularly the Gorgias.²⁹ A. A. Long has brought attention to three styles that the philosopher himself mentioned: protreptic, elenctic, and didactic (3.23.33). The exhortative and the didactic style permeate all the Discourses, but I have found that the elenctic style, which has a question-and-answer format typical of Socratic discourses, appears less frequently, because Epictetus’s “dialogues” often do not consist of two voices. Among the other predecessors who might have had some influence on Epictetus were Zeno the Stoic and Diogenes the Cynic. I suggest that the Discourses echo some characteristics of speeches that were fashionable at the time. Epictetus refused the whole package of epideictic rhetoric, and especially the noise that came with it, but certain rhetorical features influenced him to some extent when he used antithetical arguments and speeches of impersonation. These were typical of the declamations that his students had grown to appreciate. From the elementary to the rhetorical levels, ancient education was structured in tightly connected links, each one joined to the previous and following stages.³⁰ It is not surprising that an education in philosophy would maintain the same structure by encapsulating some elements connecting it to previous levels.

Epictetus used rhetoric to persuade, and in so doing he observed some principles that would make his discourse more effective. In his time, rhetoric had become a mandatory feature in higher education,³¹ and Epictetus and many of his students had been exposed to the belief that studying it would better one’s social, economic, and political position. Epictetus did not observe and organize rhetorical features rigidly but managed to maintain the spontaneity of his communications. His main preoccupation was to ensure his audience’s attention. The audience had to not only assimilate information but also react to it, so arousing emotions was fundamental. In the second century, Hermogenes of Tarsus codified a body of theory addressing different kinds of disputes that speakers would have to confront. The rhetorical system he constructed remained unsurpassed in the ancient world. Alternative strategies consisting of an antithetical argument followed by an objection were typical of forensic speeches. Hermogenes called these “antithesis” (contraposition) and considered the technique useful for introducing arguments for the opposition (called “answers”) that could then be refuted.³² Dio Chrysostom used antithesis/answer several times.³³ The format functioned very well in declamations, giving them a fluid structure that could easily be imitated. This is how the later extant declamations of Libanius are organized, for example, showing that the structure had become part of the normal fabric of speeches.³⁴

However, the antithesis and objection in Discourses 2.1.32 is important to consider—“But Did Not Socrates Write, and Who Did More Than He and How”? “Since there was not always someone available to test his judgment or to be tested by him in turn, sometimes he would test and examine himself.”³⁵ In a passage from his essay On Freedom, Epictetus examines the condition of caged birds that would do anything to escape and would even starve to death in order to gain freedom. Antithesis: “What is wrong with you here in your cage?” Objection: “I was born to fly wherever I like; to live in the open air, to sing whenever I want” (4.1.28). Or again, in another passage that exhorts listeners not to share personal information with others, the antithesis is: “Did I invite your confidences, did you open up to me only to hear mine?” The answer considers two people, one with an intact jar and another with one that has a hole. The first would not entrust wine to the second.³⁶ These and other similar instances in Epictetus could be regarded as a spontaneous feature of his speech that he had assimilated through an education in rhetoric.³⁷

Speeches of impersonation (ethopoiiai) were parts of progymnasmata, preliminary exercises in rhetoric.³⁸ They are very numerous in the Discourses, and it is peculiar that they have gone so long unnoticed. Rather than choosing examples here and there, in what follows I survey a very long and beautiful essay on Cynicism in order to put into relief the many speeches of impersonation contained therein.³⁹ This essay abounds in rhetorical questions, examples of epanaphora (repetitions at the beginning of a clause or sentence),⁴⁰ and diaphoresis (pretended doubt). Many metaphors and similes come straight from the rhetor’s handbook; topics include medicine, athletic practices, family, and nature. The first few lines refer to a young man inquiring about the profession of a Cynic philosopher. This individual could have been an acquaintance, but I am inclined to see him as idealistic pupil whom Epictetus treats with disdain.⁴¹ This young man reappears very briefly at various points, but the dominant voice is that of Epictetus. Sections 2–8 constitute a proem for the whole discourse, in which the philosopher says that he will respond “at leisure” and that the help of God is essential when embarking on such a profession. In Sections 9–11 Epictetus performs a speech of impersonation (ethopoiia) in the voice of this man or young man who is inclined to the Cynic way of life:

Already I wear a little worn coat and I will wear it then;⁴² I sleep right now on the ground and I will do so then; I will take a little satchel and a staff; I will wander, beg, and insult the people crossing my path. And if I see a man who shaves his body hair, I will abuse him and will do the same to one with an elaborate coiffure or one who is strolling in purple garments.⁴³

Epictetus may have used a farcical tone in class, insisting on the use of diminutives unrelated to the “size” of his students but intended to belittle their claims. Solo voices like this may have aroused some hilarity, but the protagonist probably would have felt mortified. The presentation of Cynicism implicit in the philosopher’s initial mocking words clashes sharply with the rest of this long discourse. After some exhortations, Sections 12–13 continue into a sort of narration (katastasis) that shows what kind of a philosopher the Cynic is: a citizen of the world, “the common educator, the pedagogue.” In Sections 19–22 Epictetus exhorts the student to purify his soul, and the latter gives voice to his future program in another ethopoiia:

Now my matter is my mind, like wood to a carpenter and leather to a cobbler, and my proper work consists of using my perceptions. My miserable body is nothing to me and its limbs are nothing. And death too, either of the whole body or a part, can come when it likes. Exile? Where can they banish me? Nowhere outside the world. Wherever I go, there will be the sun, the moon, the stars, the dreams, the presages, and conversation with the gods.

The words are too poetic and refined to actually belong to the student. It is Epictetus who breathes life into them.

In another speech in character, the Cynic shows that he has nothing— no resources, no wife, no children, only the earth and the sky and an old cloak—and yet he has a happy countenance.⁴⁴ The Discourse on the Cynic continues with another short description/narration in which he is called a messenger of Zeus, with a very long ethopoiia in his own voice. This expands on a few words of Socrates in Plato’s Cleitophon.⁴⁵Epictetus is aware that this is a grave and formal speech “on the tragic stage.” The Cynic philosopher reproaches men at length, exhorting them to search for peace and happiness and citing myth. He exhorts Agamemnon, and his words intersect with those of the Greek warrior in a complicated dialogue within the ethopoiia. Epictetus, who cites only two Homeric verses, further lends his own words to Agamemnon by attempting to console him. The voice of the Cynic reappears from 22.47 to 49 with another speech of impersonation, in which he again reveals his detachment from worldly things and his utter contentment. “Here you have the real words of the Cynic, his character and way of life” (50), comments Epictetus. He then impersonates Diogenes, who manifests his contempt for those men hurrying to see the “damned” games (58). The rest of the essay is taken up by a lengthy description of the life of the Cynic and an enumeration of all his physical and moral qualities.⁴⁶ It is evident that Epictetus does not touch on the most controversial aspects of the Cynic, “nothing about masturbation and the belly, more on healthy living and natural charm,” showing that his portrait is anachronistic.⁴⁷ The Stoics needed to justify the Cynics’ opposition to civic responsibilities, marriage, and begetting children, though they approved of virtues. Epictetus considers the Cynic’s mission a religious one and idealizes him.⁴⁸

In this essay, as in others, Epictetus uses ethopoiia very frequently, conferring on his discourse a vividness that his students would have experienced in class. Arrian was able to transmit the excitement in his notes. Epictetus condemned the emptiness and verbal games of sophistic performances but made use of some rhetorical features to enliven his teaching. It was not only l’air du temps that influenced him. Many of his students would have been exposed to the technique of argument practiced in the schools, and he fortified his instruction with certain educational aspects of proven value. By adopting some features of the rhetorical art and of declamations, the philosopher could make his message less threatening and more irresistible. Although contemporary critics have confined Epictetus to his readings of Plato and Stoic philosophers, he was not deaf to other voices. Rather, like all exceptional educators, he had access to resources that could make his messages more familiar to his audience and thus more effective.

The Voice and the Written Word: Books and Philosophy

In a letter, Seneca assures Lucilius that he will send him certain books but adds the disclaimer that in philosophy, intimate contact with one’s master is much more useful than the written word. Seneca adds that the greatest students of philosophers had become such by living under the same roof as the philosopher.⁴⁹ Dominant themes in the Discourses are the contrasts between books and the viva vox of a teacher and between reading a text passively and interpreting it by putting it into practice. In large part, these are contrasts between traditional liberal studies and the learning of philosophy.⁵⁰ The learning techniques and content that students had assimilated for many years would not disappear the instant the students arrived in another environment but would leave important traces. Epictetus’s work allows a glimpse at the transition from literary and rhetorical studies to philosophy. Any young man who left his hometown to join the philosopher would have brought with him a baggage of long-held notions and working methods that would be difficult to shed. By paying attention to these, we can understand and justify many of Epictetus’s assertions.

As a young student, Arrian must have been very aware of the issues raised by the education of the grammarian, the attempt of Epictetus to dismantle those notions, and the difficult position of some students. An aspiring philosopher had spent previous years reading books with an attention to minute details and relying on the help of a teacher who would have guided him through the meanderings of historiai.⁵¹ These consisted of all the contextual and historical points that might enrich the meaning of a text by providing glossographical notes and details on history, geography, and myth. These fragmented pieces of knowledge could swell up ad infinitum in a proliferation of exegesis of a text. Epictetus needed to challenge, and eventually eradicate, what had become for his students an accepted forma mentis. He employed the same term as grammarians (historia) to describe a method he considered pernicious.⁵² The same static system was also used when studying rhetoric. Students needed to accept past myths and historical events and develop and enrich various aspects that depended strictly on the canonical forms.⁵³ A deferential attitude toward books was the norm in conventional liberal studies. The written word and real-life experiences lay at opposite poles. “It is enough for us to learn what is written on a subject and be able to explain it before someone else,” Epictetus wrote, aptly describing the previous educational process that he rejected.⁵⁴ At the various stages of a liberal education, “to read, write and attend classes on a subject” without asking many questions was the rule, but in Nicopolis students were expected to go further and be responsible for their own educations. “Enter, young man, into your own … yours are these possessions, yours are these books, yours these discourses,” Epictetus would announce to newcomers, but these books were supposed to be no more than points of departure for philosophical discourse.⁵⁵ Generations of educated people had learned to cry over the fates of Priam and Oedipus, but philosophy looked at their misfortunes as “externals” (ta ektos): “For what else are tragedies but the portrayal in tragic verse of the ordeals of people who have come to value externals?”⁵⁶ Priam and Oedipus “were guilty” of having indulged in lamenting their cruel fates rather than accepting them with equanimity. Students of philosophy, who had to learn to overcome sorrows and disappointment, would have to either keep away from those books or learn to interpret them in the right way. It was useless to depend strictly on a text without relating the misfortunes described therein to one’s own experience. In two letters, Seneca too clarified that total symbiosis and acceptance were inconsequential and dangerous.⁵⁷

A philosopher was expected to dismantle the authoritative message that education had from its earliest stages inculcated into young men. At its core was imitation of content and form. From the start, Epictetus had to confront and combat his students’ attempts to appropriate ready-made cultural products. In one vignette, two young men praise each other for how they read and write: “You have a great gift for writing in the style of Xenophon,” says one, “And you for that of Plato,” “And you for that of Antisthenes.”⁵⁸ Rhetorical schools trained students in stylistic exercises. Epictetus objected that this type of exercise did not touch the heart and the mind, because one’s feelings would remain unchanged, and no inner improvement would occur. His antipathy for writing and books is clear in cases when texts are read passively. Of course, Socrates in the Phaedrus had maintained that the written word was inferior to spoken communications, and that books were mere reminders of philosophical teaching.⁵⁹ At worst, they could make people passive and inert. Metaphors that would become standard educational jargon were that teaching was sowing seeds and planting them in suitable ground. Writing could also be compared to painting, in that the characters resembled human beings but remained silent and unable to answer questions (275d). In his conception of books, Epictetus seems to echo a passage from the Protagoras, in which books appear inert and unable to answer or to be interrogated. “And if one questions even a small point … just as brazen vessels they go ringing on after they have been struck and continue to sound until someone puts his hand upon them.”⁶⁰Some philosophers continued to regard writing with suspicion. In the fifth century CE, Proclus refused to write a commentary, even though he had wanted to, because he had been categorically forbidden from doing so by certain visions: his own master had restrained him from writing with threats.⁶¹

Stoic teaching developed these concepts and focused on the contrast between the reception of the written word and the active use of it for one’s benefit. Written texts were inferior to personal communications, and like other later Stoics, Epictetus focused on ethics in action.⁶² It is uncertain whether Epictetus followed Musonius in his ambiguous conception of books. Snyder claimed that Musonius must have dealt with technical material in class, but no allusions to him doing so have surfaced.⁶³ Only once does the philosopher mention books, but these are texts of medicine, music, and cookery.⁶⁴ It seems so peculiar that he did not allude to Stoic texts that one is tempted to surmise that he did discuss them with his students even if he did not use books actively in class. In an essay on acquiring virtue, Musonius dismissed theory in favor of practice. This may be a sign that he mostly valued his direct message and his students’ practical application of it.⁶⁵ A question that we will have to try to answer in what follows is to what extent Epictetus relied on books.

The students and visitors arrived at Nicopolis proud of their cultural baggage and of the books they had read. They looked forward to reading more books. They came from an upper-class society that apparently read avidly, and they showed disappointment when there was no time for that (4.4.2). Books dominated the cultural landscape of the elite. The message young men received on arrival was that if their sole passion was reading books, they should turn around and go back immediately, because they had left home for nothing (1.4.22). They counted how many lines they read or wrote, but even a thousand were useless without moral thinking (4.4.8 and 18). At a previous stage of education, when they were in school and had time available, they would have dutifully devoted themselves to reading and writing as preparation for life (4.4.11). Now they were expected to show what they had learned from that training by becoming engaged in moral improvement, using books as guides for growth and self-control.⁶⁶Even though Epictetus often commented on the unreliability of books and on what exercises were actually useful to moral life, he was not an anti-intellectual who had reduced philosophy to a narrow moralism.⁶⁷ He denounced books as instruments of a culture that was based on notions and information per se. Culture was not intrinsically superior to possessions and material goods, and could not be an instrument of freedom unless it was used in a specific way.

The reasons why Epictetus objected to immersion in books were manifold. He denounced the notion that books were capable in themselves of bringing satisfaction. Books, along with the information they conveyed, were approached as silent fragments of knowledge. They did not reverberate through people’s lives. People tended to gorge themselves on books when they were not ready to absorb their content, with the result that their effect was not only insignificant but actually detrimental. Like Socrates’s brazen vessels, books were unresponsive and silent when they were approached passively. They did not have a voice. They also had no ready connection to life. Plato had said that knowledge was the food of the soul, and two passages in the Discourses equate food and books.⁶⁸ One, in which the term “to vomit” is employed three times, shows the disgust Epictetus felt for those who aimlessly filled themselves with books (3.21.1–6). While an athlete in training could show off his muscular shoulders as proof of his hard work, those who crammed their minds with books had little to show, could not digest them, and should take care not to vomit their knowledge. In another essay Epictetus points to people who bought whole treatises and proceeded to eat them up: “they vomit or have indigestion and after that come colic, discharges, and fevers” (1.26.16). Undigested books were dangerous and could seriously damage the reader who indulged in them. Seneca too used the analogy of a proper assimilation of knowledge not to risk vomiting it back up (Ep. 2.2–4). Books had to be read slowly, without approaching too many of them. The comparison of food to culture was also used outside of philosophy. Sophists such as Philostratus, Aristides, and Libanius used the term “to vomit” for those rhetors who practiced extempore rhetoric without much preparation, only to dazzle their audience.⁶⁹ These speakers would vomit a flood of words, and their half-digested speeches would intoxicate those who valued pleasurable performances. The terminology used at various stages of education was similar or even identical, though the meaning varied somewhat.

Scholars have mentioned texts that might have been present in Epictetus’s class, but his references to them are very cursory and inconclusive.⁷⁰ They usually consist of little more than names of philosophers he knew, Stoics or not, but it is unclear how and to what extent he used these texts. He scatters their names in his essays, usually without including his students (even the more advanced ones) in the discussion of their doctrine. A suggestion that Epictetus might have used several books in class and shaped his lessons around them was based on the large number of texts ascribed in general to certain philosophers like Chrysippus, Zeno, or Cleanthes,⁷¹ but this hypothesis cannot be sustained in the Discourses. On the one hand, Epictetus remarks that education (theory, theoremata) in the past had dwelled on these matters unceasingly with no change.⁷² On the other, it seems that his teaching was rather individualized and that he catered to the needs of his students (3.12.8).⁷³ Some form of a curriculum must have existed in Epictetus’s school, but we would know more details if Arrian had taken notes during all the lectures and if those four missing books had been transmitted.

In principle, we should not be averse to believing that students owned books and took them to class, even if some scholars resist the idea.⁷⁴ Some who were assiduous readers may have brought them from home. In one case there is a reference to buying books, and in another a student proud of his ability to expound on books is sarcastically invited to write his own, which Epictetus predicts will ultimately cost the paltry sum of only five denarii (1.4.16).⁷⁵ Thus the low cost of books for upper-class students somewhat contributed to diminishing their value. The presence of the school in Nicopolis may have stimulated copyists to produce some cheap texts. The same student’s invitation to the teacher to witness how well he could read a book presupposes that the text was physically in front of him. At the same time much is uncertain, as I have argued about Alexander of Aphrodisias.⁷⁶ Certainly in later times, Libanius’s students would go to school with a quantity of heavy books that could double as weapons in fights, and in sixth-century Alexandria the students of Olympiodorus must have had a text of Plato with them in class.

In Nicopolis writing suffered the same fate as reading. Most often this activity is mentioned together with reading books and receives only the conditional approval of Epictetus. A would-be philosopher “had to devote himself to learning, had to converse with himself, write about that, read, listen, and get ready.”⁷⁷ There are some instances suggesting that much writing took place. One discontented student, for example, considered it “worthless to have listened to so many lectures and written so much” (2.6.23).⁷⁸ Most of the time, however, students were discouraged from excessive writing. It was a school activity that those coming from previous levels of education did automatically, as they had been taught. Epictetus derisively presents a vignette, in 2.17.35, in which polite students praise each other’s reading and writing in various styles. He felt that those rhetorical exercises were pointless and did not help them grow and mature. “Write a book,” he told one of them; “it will cost nothing and will be worth nothing” (1.4.15).

One essay contains some information on writing that was not rhetorical (2.1). In it a relatively advanced student bemoans the lack of any improvement from his reading and writing.⁷⁹ The student had practiced with arguments and syllogisms but had not done those exercises that could free him from passions, desire, and fear. As usual with Epictetus, reading and writing were meant to lead to introspection and meditation, and in this the student had failed. He had written something, read it aloud, and now was wondering why Epictetus did not appreciate his periodia, “little convoluted writings,” and told him to get rid of them.⁸⁰And yet Socrates had done a lot of writing, the student objects. Epictetus assents, leaving scholars perplexed and questioning Diogenes Laertius’s statement (1.16) that in antiquity some believed that Socrates had written nothing. Epictetus’s indulgence in writing was perhaps similar to that of Socrates: not philosophical treatises, but instead informal writing, preparations, and annotations.⁸¹ It is likely that students had to take notes while attending classes. Epictetus’s voice would have reverberated through the class and ended up in notebooks.

Resistance

“Epictetus is a frustrating author—at least for an historian of logic,” wrote Jonathan Barnes. “Like the Lord whose oracle is at Delphi, he neither states nor hides.”⁸² Epictetus had undoubtedly been instructed in logic by Musonius, but his attitude toward the discipline was ambivalent. While he does not engage directly with logic in the parts of the Discourses that have been transmitted, at times he discusses the necessity of learning it in order to be able to enter into complex arguments. At other times, however, he discourages students from devoting too much time and effort to it.⁸³ From Diss. 1.26.13 it appears that logic was a standard part of instruction but was taught at a secondary level at an unknown level of intensity. Epictetus says that an understanding of logic allows one to enter complex arguments, master puzzles, and study syllogisms and paradoxes. Formal and sophisticated training in logic, however, was complex and would require a long time, and therefore doubts arose about its real value. Both Seneca and Epictetus were ambivalent about promoting a strong interest in logic in others.⁸⁴ The danger for the student who developed logical sophistication was that he might then overlook other, more significant, aspects of philosophy. These studies were seductive and threatened to become an end in themselves. Young men felt excited to practice logic, thinking that it conferred on them real power and control over others. We have seen that Epictetus condemned books when they were read superficially for the purpose of extracting content and without inducing further reflection. Knowledge of logic made young men arrogant and developed in them a false sense of confidence.

The influential philosopher of the Early Stoa mentioned most often by Epictetus is Chrysippus, the greatest of the Stoic logicians. He had written on hypotheses and hypothetical arguments, and to judge from the catalog of his works, his breadth of interests was vast.⁸⁵ The reasons behind Epictetus’s caution and restraint in considering Chrysippus’s work are twofold.⁸⁶ On the one hand, he never granted him as high a status as philosophers like Plato; he suggested that Chrysippus had not fully shown how to proceed toward virtue and true happiness. On the other, his works were perused and closely commented on, and students considered them authoritative texts, accepted them for what they were, and memorized them. The simple knowledge of many of his works and the capability of “reading Chrysippus by oneself” did not create progress in the sense of an improvement in virtue (1.4.5–16). Analyzing syllogisms as in Chrysippus could not prevent one from being unhappy (2.23.44). The fact that Chrysippus was notoriously obscure fed into the satisfaction and vanity of those who could understand the meaning of his words, but the benefit stopped there.⁸⁷ Students felt that they earned some merit for deciphering his texts and simply doing grammatical work. Exhibiting knowledge of Chrysippus and other philosophers at banquets drew admiration, which could become an end in itself (2.19.5–10).

The strong roots of past education may have seemed impossible to eradicate. Their previous studies had given young men the conviction that applying the rules automatically produced success. It was a comforting thought that application (ponos) could not fail. Confronting students who read passively, without forming their own judgment, Epictetus sarcastically said that they would end up speaking of “Helen, and Priam and the island of Calypso,” that is, of the kind of fiction they had studied under the grammarian and not out of their own knowledge. He was aware that if he admired the translation of Chrysippus, he would be a grammarian instead of a philosopher, “with the difference that instead of Homer I would interpret Chrysippus.”⁸⁸ He was infuriated with a young man who was determined to explain ta Chrysippeia using the same attention to detail and who insisted on showing him his commentaries (scholia).⁸⁹ Commentaries dominated the cultural landscape not so much because of a spontaneous taste for erudition, but because of the influence of educational methods and because students had trouble understanding the orginal texts.⁹⁰

Epictetus and Literature

We have seen that Epictetus denounced books as instruments of a culture that, he argued, was based on notions and information per se and from which his students extrapolated trivialities. Culture was the aim of traditional education, and his students arrived in Nicopolis expecting to read and embrace further written texts and to treat philosophy as literature. They would instead have to learn from Epictetus’s viva vox and accept that books might be useful only when they were approached to guide ethical choices and behaviors, and that they did not have any intrinsic value.

In the modern world, learning skills relies on preceding activities; the ability to write an accomplished essay comes after years of practicing on various texts. More surprisingly, as I have said elsewhere, ancient education revolved around the same limited group of texts: revisiting them, deepening their content, and considering them from different points of view. When a beginner noted down a passage of Homer, he would pay attention to correctly copying, responding to dictation, or writing it from memory. The same passage (or a similar one) would be meticulously analyzed into all its constituent parts at the grammarian’s lessons. But Homer’s verse and mythology also found much traction with rhetors. Exercises of progymnasmata, from fables to descriptions, could revolve around the Iliad or the Odyssey. An exercise that involved some creative thinking was “refutation” (anaskeue), in which a myth was contested to show that it was illogical and improbable.⁹¹ Thus in the myth of Daphne it could be objected, for example, that Apollo, being a god, was a fast runner and should have been able to immediately catch the nymph, who was much slower.⁹² Dio wrote Oration 11, The Trojan Discourse, by using anaskeue to show that despite the reverence that had surrounded Homer for centuries, his Iliad and Odyssey could be disputed. His most controversial point was that Troy had not been taken. With agility of mind and great attention to detail, the student of rhetoric would dissect a narrative, cut out some parts, and reassemble the whole again. Epictetus fought a continuous battle against the education his students had acquired at previous levels. The dangerous sentiments derived from that education encouraged an excessive attention to individual words. Books were fragmented into terms and expressions, and a point-by-point analysis of them would impede a proper understanding of content and issues. Jumping from word to word and lingering on the meaning and signification of individual units would impede the proper integration of a thought. The irritation and disappointment of the philosopher is palpable in his use of a number of diminutives to convey his disdain. There exist to my knowledge no specific linguistic studies on diminutives in Roman times, but in the Discourses it is evident that they do not hint at actual size, as they do in other cases.⁹³Epictetus argues with some contempt that the explanation of “little words” (lexeidia) should not take place in the school of a philosopher.⁹⁴ Proud students cared to demonstrate what they had done with “little words,” which then would become part of “little periods” (periodia), but he asked them to destroy that useless work (2.1.31–33). Philosophy did not consist of reciting “little words” and “proclaiming little principles” (theorematia). The grammarian and the sophist had taken care of that. As usual Epictetus found an ally in Socrates, who would have sent someone in love with elegant speech to the sophists Protagoras and Hippias.⁹⁵

Another term Epictetus charged with a negative connotation is onoma. Its meaning is similar to lexeidion (word) but at times can expand to include “expressions.” While Epictetus condemns his students’ attention to lexeidia, a term that evoked pedantic work without any reference to harmony or elegance, onomata is more associated with expressions that are arranged ornamentally, as in the sophistic art. Though only once is the term used to refer directly to the performance of a sophist who knows “the elegant art of choosing expressions and arranging them,”⁹⁶ as a rule the reference to sophistry is always implied.⁹⁷ The diminutives of disparagement (onomatia) show Epictetus’s disdain for an art that he considered mere noise and the arrangement of empty names, like hairdressers prettifying hair.⁹⁸ Can we try to imagine Epictetus spewing diminutives that conveyed his disgust and showing his repugnance on his face? The scene in class must have been less than edifying, with some students manifesting an amused interest. And Arrian? He reported all this with a straight face.⁹⁹

From literary education Epictetus borrows two other terms, melete and askesis. We should verify whether they maintained the same meaning they held in the classes of the grammarian and the rhetor, or if their sense changed significantly.¹⁰⁰ The dilemma of ancient educators had always been to reconcile natural talents with training and practice. Needing to remedy a concept of education that was based solely on inherited qualities, sophists in fifth-century BCE Athens created a trinity: nature, teaching, and practice.¹⁰¹ Rhetoric embraced the concepts of both askesis and melete. Training and practice were at the base of the creation and delivery of discourses. Rhetorical studies led a student from preliminary exercises to a finished oration, which was called melete.¹⁰²Plato had considered unremitting practice typical of rhetoric, and Aristides and Lucian had followed.¹⁰³ In Plutarch, however, askesis sometimes acquired the parallel meaning of “practice in virtue,” and in Lucian’s Hermotimus it referred to “training” in a philosophical school.¹⁰⁴ Did the interpretations of melete and meletao evolve notably when the terms were used by a philosopher?

Thomas Bénatouïl attributed to melete the meaning “meditation,” that is, an introspective and somewhat static activity.¹⁰⁵ Calling melete “meditation” does not fully convey the active and repetitive connotation of the practice denoted by this term, which was necessary to achieve success. Epictetus maintained the traditional meaning, even if he adapted it to new circumstances. When young men had just arrived at the school, Epictetus declared that his goal was to make them happy, free, and in everything contemplative of God, and explained that learning and “practice” were paramount in attaining these states (2.19.29).¹⁰⁶ Not every student followed; some refused to practice the tasks they were assigned and asked to change them.¹⁰⁷ Epictetus would repeat to them over and over that they needed to practice and have ready at hand concepts that would help them (2.1.29). Discourses 2.16 shows that he knew and used both senses of the word applied by sophists and philosophers. The melete (exercise) of an orator consisted of composing, memorizing, and pronouncing a speech. The practice he wanted his students to do, however, was one of moral purpose (meletao, askeo).¹⁰⁸ Too often, he found his pupils worthless, cowardly, lazy, and unwilling to practice because they had not been exposed to such expectations before. “If we were afraid not of death or exile but of fear itself, then we would practice how not to encounter those things we believe to be bad” (2.16.18–19). In an important passage Epictetus clarifies how practice must be applied in order to free a person from those things that were not indispensable. Melete was supposed to occupy a would-be philosopher from morning to evening. One would start by detaching oneself from less valuable material things, such as a pot, and would proceed to larger ones like a tunic, a puppy, and an old horse. The practice then expanded to one’s body, children, and wife.¹⁰⁹ This was a daily training, and it was fundamental to practice slowly and in stages.¹¹⁰ In another passage, Epictetus says that one should practice on small things such as a headache or an earache; some groaning was permissible, but not groaning internally.¹¹¹ Training and practice (melete and askesis) differed for each person according to his needs and weaknesses (3.12.7–12). One person would need to fight an inclination to pleasures, another laziness, and the avoidance of hard work,¹¹² and yet another an irritable temper or a tendency to indulge in wine, pretty girls, or cakes. Training was the cure. Meletao meant to practice over and over, all day long, to achieve moral purpose. Students of Epictetus were expected to struggle against desiring what was not given, to make use of what was given, and to accept it when something was taken away.¹¹³ At previous educational levels, melete had concerned grammatical points and forms, and applying the rules of rhetorical style. And yet the evocation of the gymnasium or of the work of an athlete, with a division of exercises according to difficulty, reveals that the old concept of mental gymnastics was still there.¹¹⁴

“Impressions”

Epictetus often reproves his students for glibly discussing ideas in class but failing in their practical application, thereby finding themselves in the midst of avoidable terrifying moments. A scene that Epictetus presents to his students in order to relieve them from fear has touches of humor (2.16.22). Epictetus puts himself at the center of the picture, and for a moment it seems that he will be lost to his terrors. He is on a boat gazing into the deep and looking around at the vast expanse of water without seeing land. When he starts to fear that the boat might sink, he is beside himself, imagining that he will have to swallow “all that sea.” Actually, he quickly adds with a sneer, three pints of water will suffice to undo him. Impressions can destroy people. In an earthquake, the same happens: he imagines that the whole city will fall on him, “even though a little stone is enough to knock my brains out.”

Another shipwreck is conjured as a response to a student who, trusting theoretical thoughts, speaks somewhat arrogantly and self-assuredly on virtues and vices (2.19.15–17).¹¹⁵ Did he evaluate those ideas clearly, Epictetus asks? Would he maintain those subtle distinctions between good and evil on board a ship in a storm, with the sails flapping madly? A fellow passenger asks sarcastically at that time: “What were you saying a little while ago by the gods? Is it a vice to suffer shipwreck?” Epictetus’s answer is fast and definitive: wouldn’t you pick up a piece of wood and crack his brain? Like Musonius and Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus believed that mistakes were due to faulty judgment, and so people could not really be blamed for them. They needed to be treated patiently, without getting irritated at their shortcomings. We have seen in the section on emotions, however, that Epictetus’s patience had limits.

In his Rhetoric, Aristotle discusses “examples” called paradeigmata that could also be employed in philosophy.¹¹⁶ What he calls logoi (“fables” or “narrations”) are traditional fictional examples, either mythological or invented. These suit real situations better than narrations of authentic facts, which are more difficult to match. They are similar to comparisons, and Aristotle says that those familiar with philosophy (philosophia) would be able to find analogies most easily. Paradeigmata were useful in persuasion. Resembling actual evidence, they could be mixed in throughout or come at the end of an argument. Epictetus uses a number of historical examples that appear at the end of an essay but are also sometimes embedded within arguments. These could refer to contemporary or past history as well as to common experiences that he would bring to his pupils’ attention.¹¹⁷ Mythological examples also find a place here. Martha Nussbaum identified an analogy with medical philosophy, which, in addition to having a consistent and rigorous argument, needed to appeal to imagination and memory through striking examples.¹¹⁸

Epictetus attracted his pupils and persuaded them to embrace a different forma mentis by appealing to their pasts and their families, friendships, and relationships, but also by referring to and closely examining literature and rhetoric, paradeigmata. In Nicopolis some students were disoriented, regretted leaving their past lives, missed the myths that had occupied them for so long, and lamented like “the man who wept for a maid.”¹¹⁹ Far from starting in a vacuum, Stoic philosophy paid much attention to past learning, forming a visible chain extending back to the past and forward into the future. Both Musonius and Epictetus believed that it was crucial to delve into their students’ past experiences and sought to become deeply aware of their histories.¹²⁰ While students’ experiences, passions, and beliefs might vary widely, necessitating different cures and individualized attention, their shared educational past constituted a common basis on which a philosopher had to work.

Stories of various kinds (drawn from history and myth) were the foundation of teaching and would have been worked up at previous educational levels. An understanding of phantasiai (impressions) is necessary to identify stories and myth within the fabric of the Discourses. Vivid narratives and concrete examples abound, in which the philosopher teaches his students to combat phantasiai. Theses needed to grab their attention and help them connect disturbing thoughts to their personal experience. In an essay concerning the uselessness of books read without a critical eye, Epictetus writes, “We have never read and never wrote in order to be able to utilize according to nature the phantasiai (impressions) that come to us.”¹²¹ Epictetus’s principal endeavor was to help apprentices of philosophy learn “the use of impressions” (chresis of phantasiai) by employing reason. The duty of a reasonable man was to correctly judge these disturbing thoughts and apply a remedy. As a rule, Epictetus refers to impressions that trouble the thoughts of actual individuals, a notable exception being his demonstration that the careful reading of books of poetry can allow one to scrutinize the motivations and actions of characters. The Homeric poems abounded in personal impressions that caused doom and devastation. Books examined critically helped one condemn old motivations and diminish personal apprehensions.

Worrisome impressions could cause much disarray, and an individual would have to learn to create some distance between himself and these painful thoughts.¹²² Without being responsible for the thoughts, which arose by themselves, an individual would have to do the necessary work in order to free himself. Impressions regarding oneself were also called phantasiai; they caused people anxiety about their behavior and motivations and were disturbing (2.21.9–10). The most vivid essay concerning “impressions” and how to confront them is 2.18, which depicts the authentic struggle of an individual, the necessity of endurance, and the power of these representations that, if not vanquished, would take hold of someone and sweep him away.¹²³ “Impressions” were disturbing thoughts that could suddenly intrude into one’s consciousness or that may always have been part of one’s existence. They could be ingrained in those who suffered from depression, could come during sleep at night, or could arise when one was inebriated.¹²⁴ They could “bite,” and people should fight them powerfully (3.24.108).

The images and types of “impressions” that Epictetus evokes are vivid. Sudden encounters with pretty girls or boys can plunge one into distress.¹²⁵ A violent storm can cause terror, unless one can counter it with the idea that death should not be feared (2.19.30). Epictetus also renders graphically the important concept that impressions are not factual, even when they seem to be, and therefore can be controlled and eradicated. “The soul is like a bowl of water and impressions are like a glimmer of light that strikes the water. When the water is disturbed, it seems that the light is disturbed, but it is not” (3.3.20). Distressing thoughts could also originate from practical and domestic concerns such as oil being spilled, a bowl being ruined, or a fire erupting in one’s absence and consuming all one’s books (4.10.26). “Using impressions” meant to work actively on them (melete) to try to recuperate a more objective attitude. A powerful example of dominating one’s distress is given by Galen in Peri alypesias.¹²⁶ Among people who could not overcome their grief for losing their books, there was a grammarian who died in shock and distraught people who dressed in black (8). Incoherent thoughts and secret fears were the obstacles. Reason should guide someone through critically manipulating impressions that pose dangers to one’s well-being. Epictetus uses the noun oxytes (sharpness) to refer to the intrinsic quality of impressions, thus conveying an idea of swiftness, sharpness, and bitterness.¹²⁷ Impressions can materialize suddenly, intrude surreptitiously, and damage the soul. How could people defend themselves? Though this is the dominant theme of Epictetus’s philosophy, he does not suggest much beyond examining external impressions from up close and pausing to put them to the test before one is swept away. Sometimes he offers more pointed advice: “Wouldn’t you rather introduce and set over an impression, a fair and noble one and throw out this dirty one?”—an interesting suggestion on which he does not elaborate (2.18.25).¹²⁸ An individual who wanted to combat an impression and who in general cared to have a more satisfying life, free of sorrow and envy, would need to practice strongly to achieve that. In Encheiridion, Epictetus uses the term melete in conjunction with phantasia: “When a rough impression comes, make a practice to say to it, ‘An impression you are, not the source of the impression’” (1.5).

Myth and Philosophy

Stoic philosophers treated myths and Homeric epic in a subtle and enlightening way. Homer was the poet for the Greeks, and his primacy in that culture was such that cultivated individuals were sure to have some lines of his poetry on their lips. A. A. Long rightly confronted the widespread opinion that Stoic philosophers, beginning with Zeno in the third century BCE, had interpreted Homer as an allegorist.¹²⁹ A truly allegorical text would be composed with the intention that readers would interpret it as such. Philosophers had not read Homer literally since before Plato, and instead considered his text a mixture of poetry and fiction. The Stoic views of Homer were complex. According to Diogenes Laertius (7.4), Zeno had written five books of Homeric Problems that are entirely lost but in which he displayed some interest in discussing philological points. Likewise, Chrysippus had engaged with grammatical criticism of Homer, emending the text and examining his poems literally. Epictetus could use poetic lines to make ethical points. Somewhat differently from rhetors, he did not look at texts from the outside in order to play with their components in bizarre sophistical games, but instead appropriated them fully so that he could transmit their ethical significance to others. Students, in turn, would absorb them and make them part of their thinking. Homer could therefore speak to a reader not exclusively through his poetic charm, but also in a new voice that Epictetus showed had always been part of his verses.

Epictetus quoted Homer fairly frequently, sometimes just a line or two and at other times by alluding to or paraphrasing passages. It is difficult to ascertain how deeply he knew the Homeric texts, and if he had ever been exposed to the entirety of both the Iliad and the Odyssey. Stoic philosophers cited Homeric lines to use them in ethical pronouncements, but not systematically. In general, it appears that Epictetus cited the Iliad more frequently than the other epic, an observation consistent with what the papyri show.¹³⁰ Mythological summaries, companions, and paraphrases were available to the educated public, and Epictetus perhaps had access to those.¹³¹ He would have derived his knowledge of the Homeric texts from his years in school, and he may not ever have gone back to them systematically. A survey of his quotations shows that at times he referred to popular verses that circulated among the cultivated public, such as his quotation of Iliad 2.24–25, “that a man who was a counselor should not sleep all night.”¹³² These verses from the dream of Agamemnon were well known in educational contexts, cited by several sophists like Hermogenes and Libanius, and developed by students as gnomai in writing.¹³³ Their appearance in the margin of a papyrus letter as a humorous exhortation not to delay sending some produce is proof that they had become a sort of proverb.¹³⁴ Occasionally, however, Epictetus used lines that seem to have been less well known and are quoted only by much later writers and philosophers.¹³⁵ A good example is his quotation of Od. 11.529–30, which appears only in Eustathius of Thessalonica’s twelfth-century commentary to the Odyssey.¹³⁶ Yet the figures from literary quotations can be slightly deceiving. The papyri show in Egypt that Odyssey 11 was widely read, both in school and by the educated public, because it brought back key figures from the Iliad, in this case the fate of Achilles.

The most interesting Homeric passages that appear in the Discourses form attractive and compelling narratives connected to people’s consciousnesses. Vivid stories and concrete examples were evoked when Epictetus taught his students to combat phantasiai, “impressions.” Thus mythological and Homeric passages had to grab their attention and help them to connect disturbing thoughts to their personal experience. An important part of his teaching was to inspire his students to read myths and literature in exactly that way. In a passage quoted in the previous section, Epictetus writes, “Books? How and for what end …? We have never read and never wrote in order to be able to utilize according to nature the phantasiai (impressions) that come to us.”¹³⁷ The examples in which he shows that careful reading of poetry books allows one to scrutinize the motivations and actions of characters are fascinating. Admiration for the conduct of a heroic figure could inspire respect and a desire to imitate him. In the first centuries of the Roman Empire, Odysseus was a favorite figure of the Homeric poems, not only in Epictetus but also in other Stoics and stoicizing authors such as Seneca, Musonius, or Dio Chrysostom, who could understand his plight because they were exiled like him.¹³⁸ The hero embodied a major theme of Stoic philosophers, that of submitting to fate and to so-called misfortunes but without bending. Virtue was schooled in adverse fate, but the philosopher had to continue to be active. In the idealization of Odysseus, misfortunes had a positive role in forming and strengthening character.

And when Odysseus was shipwrecked and cast ashore, did his need diminish his spirit or break it? But how did he go to the maids to ask for necessities, which is the most disgraceful thing for one to ask another? “As a lion reared in the mountains.” In what did he trust? Not in reputation, or money or office, but in his own might, that is, his judgement about the things which are under our control and things which are not under our control. For these are the only things that make men free.¹³⁹

An individual who correctly interpreted the Homeric words was a bold human being who did not tremble at his human condition. Homer inspired the student of literature to consider his narratives in a novel way.

On other occasions the message of poetry was distorted. The Homeric poems abounded in personal impressions that caused doom and devastation. When examined critically, books could help one control individual apprehensions. In such cases, admiration for characters and poetry was to be put aside. Characters were scrutinized for their mistakes and follies, while Epictetus remarked on the deleterious consequences brought by miscalculations and faults. The Iliad appeared as a conglomeration of human errors.

The Iliad is nothing but an impression and a poet’s use of impressions. Paris got an impression to carry off Menelaus’ wife and an impression came to Helen to follow him. Now if Menelaus had gotten the impression that to be deprived of such a wife was a gain, what would have happened? We would have lost not merely the Iliad but the Odyssey as well.¹⁴⁰

The delusions of those fictional characters affected young men’s minds and put their own secret concerns into relief. An abstract, general argument would not have the same force. The Homeric poems were imprinted in students’ minds. These examples would capture their attention and help them connect their own disturbing thoughts and behaviors.

The short passage on the Iliad examined earlier continued with a commentary, forming one of the most fascinating messages of the Discourses (1.28.14–28). It is worthwhile to spend a little time on it. The dialogue is tight, and the student’s attention is awakened. The conflict lies between the student’s conviction that the destruction at the end of the siege of Troy was catastrophic and Epictetus’s argument that wars are not the true disasters, a point he makes by pointing to the relative insignificance of human death. In wars it is not only human beings who are destroyed; there is also the “death of many oxen and many sheep and the burning and destruction of many nests of swallows and storks.” The student is confused. What is a man? Should his death be on the same level as that of a stork? What is a real calamity? Epictetus returns to the Homeric narrative. Was Alexander destroyed when the Greek ships arrived in Troy and devastated the land? This was merely the destruction of storks’ nests. No, he was ruined when he lost his honor, self-respect, and decency. In the same way, Achilles was not destroyed when Patroclus died, but instead when he raged and cried for a woman, forgetting he was a warrior. This is the true adversity that comes to humankind when correct judgment is destroyed. This powerful essay concludes with a consideration of some tragedies in order to show that the protagonists had become trapped by their impressions.¹⁴¹ If men who follow impressions are crazy and irrational, asks Epictetus, “Are we then acting differently?” With the myth having been debunked, a traditional heroic narrative was shown to be troublesome. A different reading reveals how the Homeric poems could be enlightening and formative.

Stoic philosophy was concerned with death, destiny, and assertion of moral requirement, and not with purely intellectual reasoning. It reiterated that death was a necessity and a duty. While there was no way to combat death, the fear of it needed to be pushed away along with fearful impressions and habits. Exercising strong discipline, a Stoic needed to fight things that deterred and frightened him, like death or pain, by counterbalancing them with contrary habits. In Discourses 1.27, after discussing phantasiai, Epictetus uses the outstanding example of the warrior Sarpedon in a paraphrase of Iliad 12.322–28.¹⁴²

When death appears to be an evil, we must have ready at hand the argument that it is a duty to avoid evil things and death is necessary. For what am I to do? Where am I to escape it? Suppose that I am Sarpedon, the son of Zeus saying nobly: “I have come, and now I wish either to win the prize for valor myself or give another the opportunity to win it. If I cannot succeed myself in something, I will not begrudge another the chance to do something heroic.” (1.27.7–8)

Epictetus comments that this example may be beyond most people, and yet it is not completely unreachable. Death cannot be escaped, and no magical charm against it can be found. Modern readers are always fond of the Homeric episode involving Sarpedon and Glaucus, but it is not the heroism and gallantry of Sarpedon’s words that win them over. Sarpedon’s cri de coeur, with his sincere and moving desire to survive and be forever young and immortal, emerges from the depths of the human soul. Epictetus was not interested in those words, which show the warrior in the momentary grip of a phantasia. He reported only how Sarpedon overcame a moment of weakness to become strong and aware of his destiny.

Often only one line of poetry is evoked. Epictetus mentions the examples of two blessed and happy heroes, both devoted to Zeus, who traveled everywhere and grew acquainted with many men: Heracles, a perennial hero, and Odysseus.¹⁴³ A student immediately rebuts: “But Odysseus suffered for his wife and cried sitting on a rock.”¹⁴⁴ The Homeric passage must have impressed him because of Odysseus’s manifestations of utter desperation. Epictetus promptly reacts: “But do you believe completely what Homer and his stories said?”¹⁴⁵ He continues to say that if Odysseus had really cried and lamented, he would not have been a good man, because he would be acting against Zeus, who cared for the happiness of everyone.¹⁴⁶ One should note that Epictetus alluded to the tradition of Plato and Socrates, and in another section he credits Odysseus with authentic courage.¹⁴⁷ If we find it difficult to truly understand the Stoic concept of happiness and its dismissal of seemingly justified mourning, we can identify with the student of this essay who, unconvinced, objected, “But my mother cries when she does not see me” (3.24.22). This is a plunge from Homer to philosophical interpretation and then back to reality and life.

The Theater

Two mesmerizing passages show the strong degree of attention Epictetus paid to the theater.

Remember that you are an actor in a play, the nature of which is up to the director to decide. If he wants the play to be short, it will be short, if he wants it long it will be long. Whether he wants you to act the part of a poor, or a cripple, of a ruler or of a commoner, see to it that you portray the character convincingly, but the assignment of roles belongs to another. It is up to you to play the part assigned to you, but the choice of the role belongs to another.¹⁴⁸

In this world, he assumes, everybody plays a part and is expected to fulfill his role, no matter how high or how lowly. There is no choice. God is the stage manager and dramatist. And again, in Diss. 1.29.41–43:

A time will soon come when the actors (tragoidoi) will think that their masks and boots and robes are themselves. Man, you have these things as material and plot. Say something so we may know whether you are a tragic actor or a jester. Both of these have the other things in common. For this reason, if someone removes their boots and mask and brings them on stage as mere shades, has the tragic actor vanished or does he remain? If he has a voice, he remains.

In this passage, actors are compared with those who pursue careers in important offices, such as provincial governors. They have identified with the symbols of their power. While actor and character are distinguished in the previous scenario, such separation now vanishes, and the actor loses his individuality. What is left when they strip off the senatorial toga, Epictetus asks?¹⁴⁹

Scholars have commented on Epictetus’s interest in the theater.¹⁵⁰ Here I offer some observations in the hopes of better defining what theater meant for him. The images of men as actors in the drama of life and of a philosopher as an actor performing different roles probably originated with Cynics and Stoics.¹⁵¹ These metaphors became rather popular, as shown by references in Favorinus, Lucian, and Maximus of Tyre, among others.¹⁵² At the beginning of Or. 1, for example, Maximus says that actors could play different roles (Agamemnon, Achilles, Telephus, Palamedes, and others), and therefore philosophers/actors should be versatile.¹⁵³ In a number of “theatrical passages,” Epictetus shows himself a master pedagogue, able to swiftly combine reality and myth. Examples could be used in interesting ways that appealed to students’ familiarity with the theater. The written forms of tragedies and comedies maintained a level of prestige in the second century, even if they had to be read with a different attention and sensibility in the class of a philosopher. In Diss. 1.28.32–33 Epictetus shows that Achilles and Agamemnon acted foolishly, and that both did and suffered wrongs because they were following impressions. Tragedies provided further examples of random behaviors generated by sense impressions. “What is the Atreus of Euripides? An appearance (to phainomenon). The Oedipus of Sophocles? An appearance. The Phoenix? An appearance. Hippolytus? An appearance.” Men trapped in the clutches of sense impressions were called madmen, yet they continued to act irrationally. Epictetus evokes or randomly mentions Heracles, Oedipus, Laius, Aegisthus, Eteocles, and Polyneices. In Diss. 2.17.19–22 he paraphrases Euripides’s Medea, providing a commentary in which he calls her “a great spirit” on account of her clairvoyance and knowledge of herself.¹⁵⁴

Epictetus’s allusions to the theater did not rest on books alone, however, but depended on living performances that took place at the time. To what kinds of spectacles was he referring in the second quotation above when he mentioned masks, boots, and robes? The common assumption regarding his theatrical allusions has always been that he was calling attention to classical drama, but this is only a part of the reality. The classical tragedies and comedies of the fifth century BCE continued to be represented, sometimes in abridged form. Dio in Or. 19.5 writes that the iambics of tragedies had been preserved but the lyric parts had fallen away. In Or. 11.9 he mentions a series of mythological themes interpreted by the flute or sung in the theaters, where those who offered the most emotional spectacles received prizes.¹⁵⁵ When Dio mentions that these actors were interpreting stories “in words or music,” he alludes to tragedies interpreted by tragoidoi, actors who would break into songs.

Other genres, however, had developed in the Hellenistic and Roman periods: mimes and pantomimes.¹⁵⁶ These attracted enthusiastic crowds throughout the Roman Empire and continued to enjoy great success in late antiquity, despite the reservations of Christians such as Tatian and John Chrysostom. Pantomime actors wore beautiful masks suited to the story, which had closed mouths because the actors were silent and interpreted the drama through exaggerated gestures and dance. By contrast, Lucian considered hideous those actors of tragedies who performed wearing huge masks with gaping mouths, shoes with very high soles, and padding all over.¹⁵⁷ Epictetus and his students must have been very familiar with these entertainers.¹⁵⁸ Long’s remark that the students came from well-off families that belonged to the upper echelons of society, and therefore were fond of spectacles, is not particularly relevant here, because these performances were open to all classes.¹⁵⁹ At that time a multitude of local festivals were still held in the empire, organized and endowed by private citizens.¹⁶⁰ Pantomimes apparently played a role in disseminating tragic stories at the beginning of the empire.¹⁶¹ Though pantomimes were performed by masked dancers who acted out mythological subjects through movement, mimes could be staged not only in theaters but also in private houses and in the street. Actors would perform a single role with quick reversals and a varied repertoire in which gods and heroes were presented in banal situations.¹⁶² These were burlesque performances comparable to, but much less refined than, Lucian’s four groups of very brief dialogues, the Dialogues of the Dead, of the Courtesans, of the Gods, and of the Sea Gods.¹⁶³The latter of these drew inspiration from Homer, among others. As we shall see, Epictetus played on his students’ familiarity with both spectacles and Homer to construct tight mini-vignettes that would not only amuse them but also show how much he despised that world of counterfeit heroes. As in the world of Lucian, traditional heroes and episodes were seen from new perspectives and with undertones of Cynic and Stoic lines of questioning.

In Diss. 1.22.3–8 Epictetus mentions contemporary conflicts between Jews and Syrians and Egyptians and Romans.¹⁶⁴ The humor of the following Homeric vignette derives from the rapid and insipid verbal exchanges of the characters. The debate between the heroes does not center on heroic issues, but on girlfriends. Agamemnon and Achilles are the protagonists of a childish drama centered around Chryseis and Briseis.

The petty way in which Epictetus presents these personal hostilities in the Trojan War was also meant to trivialize the modern conflicts he mentions.¹⁶⁵ New comedy and issues of bourgeois life were both objects of attention.

A similar exchange takes place in Diss. 2.24.21–23. Here Agamemnon does not think it expedient to return Chryseis to her father, but Achilles considers the move advantageous. This disagreement makes them forget the important reason for which they had come to Troy and their duty to engage in the war as warriors. Here Epictetus seems to address an actor in the little play.

The passage continues by addressing the two warriors who “engaged in a fist-fight” for the sake of “a young maid.”

In another scene¹⁶⁶ Epictetus discusses hypothetical arguments that “are similar to a game or a drama in that they depend on certain premises.”¹⁶⁷ This time, he embodies the persona of a dependent or servant of Agamemnon: “And again we have agreed to play the story of Agamemnon and Achilles. The one who has been appointed to play the part of Agamemnon says to me: ‘Go to Achilles and drag away Briseis.’ I go. He says, ‘Come’ and I come.” A much longer debate with Agamemnon occurs within the essay on the Cynic philosopher (3.22.33).¹⁶⁸ Parts of it are in the same short and crude theatrical style as the lines before.

A few lines below, at 3.22. 36–37:

These exchanges are frozen and unrealistic, and because of that they are humorous. The protagonists seem like foolish puppets in a world of spectacles that would also include acrobats, clowns, jugglers, and dancing bears.¹⁷⁰ The Homeric texts and tragedies they are intended to mimic are far in the background. There is no character development, and the issues at hand are reduced to artificial dialogues of no importance. Epictetus is the puppeteer, and he holds his marionettes tightly in his hands. They do not have any independence or ability to escape their destinies. One surmises that in addition to arousing some hilarity in class, these vignettes would also have reinforced students’ perception that the literature they relished, and into which they had delved for many years, was merely fiction and therefore not so far removed from the contemporary world full of pretension and posturing. In these exchanges, are we supposed to imagine pantomimes constantly transforming themselves with eloquent gestures from one character to another, from Agamemnon to Achilles? Or are these burlesque mimes presented and read in a comic vein and intended for humor and laughter? It is not important to identify them precisely, but the world of spectacle is visibly exuding mockery and disdain.

Listening to the Philosopher: Are These Arrian’s Notes?

Some scholars continue to maintain a view of the Discourses as a text that Arrian fully composed while trusting his memories, as Xenophon had done. Were these notes that Arrian jotted down spontaneously after hearing Epictetus’s lectures, or do we have to regard this account as a continuous literary text? Arrian tells us that they were annotations of what Epictetus delivered in class. I showed above that the letter to Gellius is an authentic document, on the basis of which we can maintain that Arrian took down notes. However, it is now time to see whether the text itself contains some indications in this respect. Here and there in what precedes, I have pointed to the fact that the text can be regarded as extemporaneous and artless; it is time to gather my observations. The titles of the various essays, which have been added later on, give some artificial uniformity to the story. Those individuals who according to Arrian had gotten hold of his notes and leaked them to the public must have understood their value. Arrian’s initial annotations may have been disorderly to a degree; of this there are signs. A clean text with good handwriting and no abbreviations was a sine qua non. It is logical to assume that he took rough notes initially and later roughly edited them for himself, even if they were not thoroughly revised. He either personally copied the text from his notes or dictated them to a scribe without eliminating episodes, leaving the expressions and verbal peculiarities of the philosopher as they were in reality.

Arrian’s notes thoroughly convey the ways in which he experienced Epictetus’s brilliance, his intensity, his sometimes difficult rapports with others, his intransigence, and his ardent demands that his students internalize his discourse. But how did he do that? He wrote his notes without making them more palatable and presented sometimes disputable but spontaneous traits of the philosopher that would not be there in a literary and artificial account. When Epictetus spewed out his furious diminutives that showed his outrage, Arrian and his classmates must have been thoroughly entertained. And what about when the philosopher became the puppeteer of some mythological figures? His line-by-line dialogues show that he was the amused “director of the play,” who surely provoked hilarity while giving some crucial lessons. Scholars have observed that the image that the philosopher projected was quite different from late antiquity, when some philosophers (Proclus, Plotinus) appeared larger than life. And yet Epictetus was indeed larger than life and captured the full attention of his student Arrian.

Arrian was able to render the atmosphere of the class eloquently by annotating the various and entertaining teaching strategies. It was important to the philosopher to disconnect his students from the academic world they had left behind and the cultural milieu to which they were habituated. In some cases, he had to dwell on myths and on Homer, putting into relief how characters were deluded, and how their expectations were wrong. He showed that these figures desired futile objects and insane relationships, and that impressions were there to ruin them. While all these lessons were conducive to serious reprimands and abrasive criticism, sometimes Epictetus tried to reach the same goal through laughter. By representing the frozen characters of the little story of Achilles and Agamemnon and others, Epictetus must have generated some relaxation that Arrian thought was essential to record in order to depict realistically his pedagogy. The humor of the Homeric vignettes derives from the rapid and insipid verbal exchanges of the characters.

Arrian was an enthusiastic disciple who aimed at preserving Epictetus’s ideas and communicating their significance to others. We do not know for sure if he made some cuts in Epictetus’s words while taking them down. His notes transmit more than just the content and the ethical message of the philosopher. They also give the essence of his classes, the behaviors of students, their resistance and arrogance, and, at times, Epictetus’s disappointment at their lack of understanding. Students’ emotions such as envy, regret, and loneliness are revealed too, sometimes with ridicule. We are exposed to Epictetus’s oral style, his use of the contemporary Koine, and the vocabulary of philosophical teaching. In the four books that have been preserved, Arrian chose to transmit the conversations of Epictetus and his students rather than the philosopher’s theoretical teaching, which probably took place in the afternoons when Epictetus read Stoic writers with his class. At earlier stages of education, knowledge was considered a movable object, and a teacher was simply its transmitter. In philosophy, by contrast, knowledge was fire and the teacher ignited it. Education was not conceived of as filling a vase but as a way to light a spark.¹⁷¹ Arrian was deeply aware of this and was right to fear that Epictetus’s words would be lost or misinterpreted, as he manifests in the letter to Gellius.

For Arrian, dialogues between Epictetus and his pupils were the most valuable part of his teaching. At the same time, we have noticed how few of these are real dialogues and that Arrian often put in Epictetus’s mouth the responses of others through his solo performances. But why did he do that? This was a necessity if he cared to keep up with his master’s pace. By often omitting the questions and answers of his classmates, he gave his note-taking some respite. When reading the Discourses, some have wondered whose voices we are hearing. This is certainly the voice of Epictetus. He was the puppeteer of the class play and its director.

Returning now for a last look at the Discourses, one passage recounts a little story (2.17.30–33). It presents a new student, whom the philosopher welcomes to the school warmly, saying that it is the youth’s destiny to adorn philosophy. The young man goes through his first level of studies “and masters it like an athlete.” He then goes back to Epictetus for advice, saying: “Surely, I want to be calm and peaceful, but as a pious man, a philosopher, and a diligent student, I also want to know what my duty towards the gods is, towards parents and brothers, towards my country and strangers.” When the philosopher tells him to move on to the second level, the student objects that he has done so already, but that his goal is to achieve tranquility and security forever.

Overwhelmed, Epictetus proclaims, “Man, you are a god!” We wonder about the identity of this perfect young man. Was he an ideal student, someone Epictetus conjured up as a reassuring counterpart to the average young men who disappointed him? Or perhaps was he Arrian himself?

1. As an example of a school of rhetoric in the fourth century, see the school of Libanius in Antioch, in Cribiore 2007a.

2. Diss. 3.23.17. It is generally recognized that Dio Chrysostom is mentioned here. See below about the same speech. He studied with Musonius Rufus together with other philosophers mentioned by Fronto, Letters to Verus 1.1 (Naber 113, Vat. 1–8). See Van den Hout 1999, 135, 19. Fronto had an aversion for Epictetus.

3. See 3.23.19.

4. See Dio Or. 13.10–12. It is unsure if at the time this essay of Epictetus was written Dio had already started to circulate his idealized interpretation of his exile. See Desideri 1978, 91–97.

5. Cf. Cribiore 2020b.

6. Diss. 3.23.25–26.

7. Here as elsewhere diminutives reduce the meaning of a word, adding an accent of contempt.

8. Diss. 3.23.26. I prefer to adopt the traditional reading of Souilhé (1948) rather than that of Dobbin (2008, 172), who eliminates eipein and introduces with tina the comment of someone in the audience. Eipein together with “reading” shows different kinds of performance, and the arrogant comment of the speaker shows the vanity of the profession.

9. Diss. 2.16.4–10. In looking at Philostratus’s Vitae the hard work of sophists is evident in spite of extempore performances.

10. Diss. 2.16.10.

11. 3.23.27–29 and 35. Likewise Epictetus abhorred that doctors advertised for patients as they did in Rome at that time. It appears that invitations to lectures were done later in the fourth century; see Libanius Or. 3.10, who sent his slave to make the calls. His presentation of one of these sophistic performances evokes Lucian’s Professor of Rhetoric.

12. Brunt 1994, 25–52, on Philostratus.

13. Gellius, Noctes Atticae 5.1. On Musonius, see for the Greek text Lutz 1947. See also Lutz and Reydam-Schils 2020; Gill 2000, 601–3.

14. Xenophontos 2013, 2016. For a full bibliography on Plutarch, see note 1 of Roskam 2004.

15. See, e.g., 2.20.27–28. See also 1.23 with Dobbin’s comments.

16. Lutz 1947, 11–13.

17. Consider the one-line fictional and theatrical dialogues at the end of the work.

18. Long 2006, 207. On dialogue in antiquity, see Andrieu 1954; Goldhill 2008; Müller 2021; Müller and Föllinger 2013.

19. Wehner 2000. The discussion of the many parts of a dialogue (e.g., opening, address, prayer, declamatory part, etc.) does not let one perceive the overall function of the dialogic mode of presentation.

20. Colardeau (1903, 282–85) noticed that and related it mostly to Plato and the Attic orators. For a narratological view of dialogues, see Finkelberg 2019.

21. A similar subject in 3.2.

22. Diss. 3.1.36–37.

23. Long (2002, 235) prints them as true dialogues while Dobbin prints them as a continuous discussion.

24. He probably knew those young men up close and could evaluate their performance.

25. Yet we should not completely discard another hypothesis. It is unclear how much active participation was required from students in philosophical classes in general, and in that of Epictetus specifically. The assumption that much discussion went on is far from certain and stems mostly from what we know of education in modern universities in Europe and North America, where student-teacher interaction is highly valued.

26. Long (2002, 49–50, 52–57) does not expand much on the subject. Costa (2008, 106) claimed that there was no rhetoric in the Discourses, but he is isolated in this respect. Of course, the lectures show an oral style, and the text was not edited. In Diss. 2.23.1 Epictetus expresses his appreciation for an attractive style and appropriate language.

27. Bowersock (1969) argued that the remaining texts were rhetorical showpieces on fictional or traditional themes. See Puech 2002.

28. On the status of sophists and on their life day by day, especially in the second century, see Favreau-Linder et al. 2022.

29. On the influence of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the early Stoics, see Jagu 1946; Wehner 2000, 9–13.

30. Cribiore 2001b.

31. Cf. Lendon 2022.

32. See Heath 1995, 252. On declamations adopting this technique, see Russell 1996; Martin 1974, 124–25, 294.

33. Antithesis and answer appear, e.g., in Dio Or. 33.19: “Didn’t Odysseus come from a small rugged island that only pastured goats? Yes, but he was able through his counsel to take a city like Troy.” Or. 11.15 with antithesis and answer: people object that Homer who was a beggar told truthful stories, but beggars of the present time tell nothing but lies; 11.18: what prevented Homer who said untruths about the gods from speaking the same way about men? He did indeed make use of all possible falsehood; see also 10.7 and 10.13.

34. Libanius, Declamations, e.g., 26 and 27. Most speeches of Libanius show this feature, e.g., Or. 9, 19, 21, 25, 27, 34, 36.

35. See note in Oldfather 1926.

36. To Those Who Lightly Share Personal Information (4.13.11–13).

37. See, e.g., Diss. 3.3.2; 4.1.108.

38. On progymnasmata in general, see Webb 2001. On the teaching of progymnasmata in rhetorical schools, see Pernot 1993, 56–66. See also Cribiore 2001b, 220–30. Progymnasmata could be used as models for students to recite them or to verify that their written samples conformed to those. See Theon of Alexandria 70–72; Patillon and Bolognesi 1997, 15, 17. Individual progymnasmata, especially encomium and invective, might be part of declamations; cf. Libanius 25–27.

39. Diss. 3.22.

40. See 3.22.13 and 31.

41. Dobbin 2008, 157–68. In section 10 Dobbin failed to translate the diminutives that indicate the contempt of Epictetus. In the final part, 3.22.108, the interlocutor is dismissed and compared to a woman, Andromache, who should not mix in men’s affairs.

42. The young man shows how well the new profession will fit him.

43. Some elements of this description at Diss. 4.8.34; cf. also 3.12.9. Cf. Lucian, Vit.Auct. 9.

44. Diss. 3.22.45–49.

45. Diss. 3.22.26–30; Cleitophon 407a.

46. Diss. 3.22.62–109.

47. Schofield 2007, 84–85.

48. On the Stoic idealization of the Cynics, see Allen 2020, 67–99. See also Goulet-Cazé 2017.

49. See Ep. 6.

50. Cf. Marcus Aurelius Meditations I 17.4.8; II 2–3; III 14. For him books were useless, and one was not supposed to go back to review readings.

51. See what the grammarian Dionysius Thrax declared around 100 BCE in Grammatici Graeci 1.1, p. 5, 1–5. From the same century see Asklepiades of Myrlea, Sextus Math. 1.91–94 and 252–53. Cf. Cribiore 2001b, 185–86.

52. 2.21.10. The passage is misinterpreted by Oldfather (1926, 377), who translates it as “history of philosophy.” Dobbin (2008, 134) is also misguided translating “memorizing its doctrines.” In 2.19.7 Epictetus mimics a grammarian who is asking minute questions such as who Hector’s father was and so on.

53. Only in the exercise of refutation was there room for some creativity.

54. Diss. 4.4.14.

55. Diss. 2.17.30.

56. Diss. 1.4.25–26; see Snyder 2000, 30–38; Diss. 2.19.

57. Seneca Ep. 33 and 88; Nussbaum 1994, 346–47.

58. Diss. 2.17.35–36.

59. Plato, Phr. 274b–277a.

60. Diss. 4.4; Plato, Protagoras 329a.

61. Edwards 2000, 99. His students devised a stratagem employing notes. Cf. in part III some Neoplatonic commentators’ reluctance to write.

62. Reydams-Schils (2010, 565) surmised that they avoided theory in the attempt to move beyond the controversies of their predecessors. On Socrates’s cultivation of ethics, see Aristotle, Metaphysics 978b2. Wolfsdorf (2020) considers ethics before Socrates. On ethics in the Stoics, see also Sellars 2014, 107–34. On ethics before Epictetus in the early Roman period, see Inwood 2014. See also Coope and Sattler 2021.

63. Snyder 2000, 18–19.

64. Musonius 18A Hense/Lutz.

65. 5 Hense/Lutz. In 6 Hense/Lutz he urged students to practice what they learned from him in order to train their souls.

66. Diss. 4.4.15–18 with a list of books to be used for better reading.

67. Bénatouïl 2009, 52–53.

68. Plato, Prt. 313c.

69. On vomiting words, see Philostratus, VS 491 on the eloquence of Favorinus who was like an immature youth; Eunapius, VS 488 reporting the words of Prohaeresius about Aristides on speeches not elaborated. On Aristides himself who refused to declaim extempore, see Philostratus 583. In Libanius, see Decl. 27.6–11. Cf. the derisive terminology of Eunapius, VS 454 about Philostratus who “spat out” the Lives.

70. Snyder 2000, 20–21; Del Corso 2005, 37–38. However, Snyder (2000, 86–98) considers it very likely that books existed in the classes of philosophers.

71. Del Corso 2005, 43–45.

72. Diss. 2.23.43–47. He made the same observation regarding rhetoric. Judging from this, he seemed in favor of some change.

73. In general, information and even mention of the existence of a curriculum by educators at other levels is rather scanty with the exception of Quintilian. In Or. 34.15 Libanius inveighed against a pedagogue who had criticized him for debating on Homer and Demosthenes without end. The resentful response of the sophist was that the fault was with the curriculum. See Cribiore 2007a, 147–55.

74. Snyder (2000, 24) maintains that it is very unlikely because local bookstores in Nicopolis would not provide texts.

75. The sum was little for an upper-class individual, but for a poor man it was a week’s wages. I owe this information to Roger Bagnall.

76. See part I.

77. See Diss. 4.4.30 and 3.5.11.

78. Of course, the young man’s mood may have influenced his statement. In Diss. 4.5.8 the mention of writing a thousand lines is hypothetical but still indicative of its presence in class.

79. Diss. 2.1. 29–40. See Del Corso 2005, 46–49.

80. Another diminutive to indicate disdain.

81. The fact that the student does not mention Epictetus as a writer may indicate that he felt that his teacher wrote less than Socrates.

82. Barnes 1997, 126. His full consideration of logic in Epictetus is on 24–99. On logic, see Dobbin 1998, 113–14; Sellars 2014, 75–80.

83. Diss. 1.7, 1.8, 1.11.39–40, 1.17.4–12, 2.14, 2.13.21, 2.25, 2.23.41.

84. See Nussbaum 1994, 148–51.

85. Barnes 1997, 85–98; of these some fragments survive. Diogenes Laertius 7.189–202; Dorandi 2007. Unfortunately, his work is mostly lost.

86. See Reydams-Schils 2011a, 298–310.

87. See the whole passage in Diss. 1. 4.7–18 with commentary in Dobbin 1998; 1.17.13–18, Dobbin 1998, 166–67.

88. Ench. 49.

89. Diss. 3.21.7.

90. Bénatouïl 2009, 142. See part III.

91. See Aphthonios, Progymnasmata, ed. H. Rabe, 1926, Leipzig.

92. Patillon (2008, 121–24) on Aphthonios. Cf. ps.-Hermogenes 190–91 on anaskeue (refutation).

93. In the papyri diminutives refer to size and age. In the Archive of Apollonius (139–63), Heraidous, the strategos’s daughter, is called “little” not only because she was young but also to distinguish her from another older Heraidous. See Bagnall and Cribiore 2006.

94. Diss. 3.21.6–8. Cf. his identical dislike for logaria, a diminutive of “words,” in 2.18.26.

95. 3.5.15–17. See Plato’s Protagoras where young Hippocrates visits a group of sophists including Protagoras; and Theatetus 151b, sending people who cannot benefit from his teaching to others, like Prodicus. The comparison with people wanting to buy humble vegetables shows Plato’s scorn for this type of work.

96. Diss. 3.23.25–26. Another reference to Socrates in Plato, Apology 17c.

97. Diss. 2.23.2 and 14.

98. Diss. 2.23.14 and 3.23.26.

99. We can bet that if he had composed the Discourses artistically in the manner of Xenophon, as Wirth argued, provoking language like this would have been avoided. In one instance the use of onomata appears slightly different because it refers to work done in the class of the philosopher (2.14.14). Epictetus urges an interlocutor to do some work to deepen the meaning of “expressions.” The man is outraged by the implication that he did not know his onomata, but Epictetus replies disparagingly that he knows them as well as illiterates know written speech.

100. In one essay, moreover, he mentions some “preliminary training” (progymnazo) that an expert student was supposed to impart to a younger one (1.26.13); the older pupil had set a difficult passage to read and hints at a connection with logic. On some suggestions about the content of these progymnasmata, see Del Corso 2005, 45; Snyder 2000, 25.

101. See Diels 1952, 264. Cf. Plato, Protagoras; cf. Cribiore 2007a, 129–34.

102. Cribiore 2007a, 150, 153.

103. Plato, e.g., Alc. 20b; Grg. 509e; Prt. 323d with askesis, epimeleia (application), and didache (teaching). Lucian, e.g., Apology 15.4. Aristides mentions the noun and the verb very frequently in all his works.

104. Plutarch, Lycurgus and Numa 4.4; Lucian, Hermot. 7.12, referring to those who complete their training. See also Nigr. 27.6, practice of arete.

105. Bénatouïl 2009, 148.

106. Cf. Diss. 2.9.13: the philosophers say that learning is not enough but practice (melete) and training (askesis) need to be added.

107. Diss. 1.29.39–43. The comparison of the athlete is again used.

108. Cf. 2.2.38: “Let others practice lawsuits, or problems, or syllogisms”; they were supposed to practice how to die. Melete could embrace many activities.

109. Diss. 4.1.111. Externals had to be eliminated and things should be mentally discarded.

110. In Diss. 4.6.16 there is the same combination of melete and gymnazein.

111. Diss. 1.18.18–19. Groaning within oneself and lamenting the unfairness of a situation were much worse than venting some pain outside.

112. Ponos and philoponia were precious words in education. Epictetus does not use them frequently and criticizes those who stay up all night reading and writing (4.4.40–41). He is not impressed by the philoponos because he does not know his motivation. In two instances, ponos refers to learning and the hard work required in Nicopolis (1.20.13 and 2.21.14).

113. Diss. 2.16.27–28.

114. Comparisons with athletes are numerous, e.g., 3.22.51–52; 3.25.2–5; 4.4.30.

115. In 3.5.17 Epictetus says that Socrates was only preoccupied to improve himself and sent those concerned with theories to sophists like Protagoras or Hippias.

116. Rhet. 1394a 2–18.

117. See, e.g., 1.18–32 the Pisonian conspiracy against Nero; 2.8–11 holding the chamber pot for another; 2.12–13 contemporary history; 2.19–24 Vespasian and Helvidius Priscus; 2.25 the dying athlete; and in 1.9.27–34, two personal examples.

118. Nussbaum 1994, 35–36. On medical imagery, see part III regarding Philodemus.

119. Diss. 2.16.28–29. Divine law—says Epictetus—dictates not to take things that belong to others but to use what you have, and not even to desire what you do not have, and if something was taken away from you to give it up easily. The allusion is to Achilles who is not considered a real hero. A young man who complains about what he left behind is like Achilles lamenting the loss of Briseis.

120. Notice the difference from Epicurus; see Suits 2020. See part III about Philodemus and Parrhesia.

121. Diss. 4.4.14. What follows shows that he attempted something similar with Homer. See also 1.27, all devoted to impressions.

122. Bénatouïl 2009, 97–125. See also Dobbin 1998, 73, 214–18.

123. See especially 2.18.24–32, against depression.

124. 3.2.5, students of philosophy have to become stronger in order to confront “impressions.”

125. 3.2.8 and 3.25.6. Unchaste thoughts can assail the onlooker. The meeting of Paris and Helen had caused much ruin.

126. See Boudon-Millot and Jouanna 2010.

127. Diss. 2.18.24.

128. Diss. 2.18.25. See also 3.12.6–7. He hints more vaguely at that procedure in 1.27.4–5.

129. Long 1992. Philosophers had interpreted Homer allegorically before the Stoics. See Lamberton 1986; Lamberton and Keaney 1992.

130. Cribiore 2001b, 194–97.

131. Cameron 2004, 52–69.

132. Also see 2.61–62. Cf. Maximus of Tyre Diss. 15.6.32.

133. Hermogenes Prog. 4.4 and in Libanius Prog. 4.1.

134. P.Flor. II 259; the writer was not a particularly cultivated person.

135. See Diss. 3.22.30. These verses were quoted by Galen and only later by some philosophers. They are all from the Iliad, book 10.15; 91; 94–95, and 18.289.

136. Diss. 4.8.32, the emotional passage in which Odysseus reassures Achilles about the preeminence of his son Neoptolemus.

137. 4.4.14. What follows shows that he attempted something similar with Homer. See also 1.27, all devoted to impressions.

138. See Montiglio 2011, 66–94. Cynic philosophers also regarded Odysseus with admiration and were attracted to the hero as a beggar. See n. 43 in Montiglio.

139. See Od. 6.130; Diss. 3.26.33–35; “necessities,” that is, food.

140. Diss. 1.28.12–13. See Lamberton and Keaney 1992.

141. Diss. 1.28.32–33: Atreus, Oedipus, Phoenix, and Hippolytus were blinded by their impressions.

142. See the commentary in Dobbin 1998, 214–18.

143. Odysseus was preferred as a hero because one could suspect in Heracles an excessive willingness to sustain labors.

144. Od. 5.82. “Rock” was a variant of “shore.”

145. See in Dio Or. 11 the criticism of Odysseus.

146. Diss. 3.24.17. Cf. the commentary to this passage in Long 2002, 191–94.

147. Diss. 3.26.33–34 where Odysseus reacts with dignity after the storm, trusting his judgments.

148. Epictetus, Encheiridion 17. On theater see also fr. 1: the actor Polus performed Oedipus as a king and as a beggar. The good man should perform well in every costume. Maximus of Tyre Or. 1.2 argues that the actor should respect “the beauty of the compositions he plays and never allows himself to be stricken by speechlessness.”

149. See Long 2002, 242–43. The actor’s costume corresponds to life circumstances, and the voice is his true self.

150. Marcus Aurelius 12.36 also used the comparison of the play of life. Death arrives even when the actor complains that he had not acted in all his five acts; see Sellars (2021, 97), who thinks that Marcus was inspired by Epictetus.

151. But cf. Plato R. 577a–b. More in Dobbin 1998, 231.

152. Koniaris 1983, 220–22; Favorinus de exilio 3; Lucian Saturnalia 19; Maximus of Tyre Or. 1.

153. Maximus Or. 1.1; Trapp 1997.

154. Euripides, Medea: the part of the text he paraphrases is roughly lines 790–810.

155. For other passages that testify to Dio’s attention to the theater, see Webb 2018, 302–15.

156. See Hall and Wyles 2008. On the difference between mime and pantomime, see Wiseman 2008; Webb 2008. Quintilian 4.2.52 and 53 mentions mime as having a credible pattern of events and crude subjects. The most extensive farce and mime on papyrus is P.Oxy. III 413.

157. Lucian, On the Dance 27–30.

158. The festivals he mentions in 4.4.24–27 must have provided these spectacles.

159. Long (2002, 243) talks about “performative demands of elite Roman culture.”

160. Wilson 2007.

161. Lucian, On the Dance 37–61 has a long list of subjects for pantomimes. Garelli (2007, 271–80) provides a list of known pantomimes that took place.

162. G. Theocharidis 1940; Sonnino 2014. See Webb 2008, 12n19 with extensive bibliography on pantomime.

163. Cf. for example in Lucian’s Dialogues of the Gods 21 (17) the fast lines in the opening of Apollo and Hermes or of 13 (8) Hephaestus and Zeus.

164. The reason of the conflict was the debate over whether eating pork was holy or not. The comparison with the quarrel of Agamemnon and Achilles continues in 1.22.5–8.

165. Wehner (2000, 157–75) looks at fictional dialogues with heroes of the myth and considers Agamemnon and Achilles the only figures present in dialogues.

166. Diss. 1.25.10–13.

167. Dobbin 1998, 207. Cf. 1.12.17 and 1.7.22–25. See 1.26.1: “As a student was reading the hypothetical arguments, Epictetus said: ‘This also is a hypothetical law, that we must accept what follows from the hypothesis.’”

168. I covered this Cynic essay in reviewing Epictetus’s attention to rhetoric.

169. A diminutive that diminished the stature of Helen. Oldfather’s translation as “frail” is wrong. Agamemnon is contemptuous.

170. Webb 2008, 25–26.

171. Cf. above, 2.24.28 when Epictetus declares that there was no spark between him and that student.