Discourses of Epictetus

The Discourses of Epictetus (Greek: Ἐπικτήτου διατριβαί, Epiktētou diatribai) are a series of extracts of the teachings of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus written down by Arrian c. 108 CE.

There were originally eight books, but only four now remain in their entirety, along with a few fragments of the others. In a preface attached to the Discourses, Arrian explains how he came to write them:

I neither wrote these Discourses of Epictetus in the way in which a man might write such things; nor did I make them public myself, inasmuch as I declare that I did not even write them. But whatever I heard him say, the same I attempted to write down in his own words as nearly as possible, for the purpose of preserving them as memorials to myself afterwards of the thoughts and the freedom of speech of Epictetus.

The Discourses are unlikely to be word-for-word transcriptions and are probably written-up versions of Arrian's lecture notes. The books did not have a formal title in ancient times. Although Simplicius called them Diatribai (Διατριβαί, Discourses), other writers gave them titles such as Dialexis (Διαλέξεις, Talks),Apomnêmoneumata (Ἀπομνημονεύματα, Records), and Homiliai (Ὁμιλίαι, Conversations). The modern name comes from the titles given in the earliest medieval manuscript: "Arrian's Diatribai of Epictetus" (Greek: Ἀρριανοῦ τῶν Ἐπικτήτου Διατριβῶν).

The earliest manuscript of the Discourses is a twelfth-century manuscript kept at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. In the Bodleian manuscript, a blot or stain has fallen onto one of the pages, and has made a series of words illegible; in all the other known manuscripts these words (or sometimes the entire passage) are omitted, thus all the other manuscripts are derived from this one archetype.

The Discourses were first printed (in Greek) by Vettore Trincavelli, at Venice in 1535.

The first English translation did not appear until 1758 with the appearance of Elizabeth Carter's translation. This proved to be very successful, with a second edition appearing a year later (1759), a third edition in 1768, and a fourth edition published posthumously in 1807. It influenced later translations: e.g. those of Higginson and George Long (see his Introduction for comments, some critical of Carter).

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