The Encheiridion and Discourses

Summary

Born into slavery in the first century AD, Epictetus was a leading Greek philosopher of the Stoic school. He spent most of his life in Rome before the emperor Domitian banished all philosophers from the city in AD 93; his exile then took him to Nicopolis in Greece. His teachings were recorded by his pupil Arrian, who published both the Encheiridion and Discourses . The Discourses , which Arrian claimed to have taken down during lectures he attended, comprised eight books of which we have only four. The Encheiridion (‘Handbook’) is a distillation of the main ideas found in the Discourses . Throughout these works is the strong sense of Stoic philosophy, with its emphasis on self-examination and self-knowledge, being presented as a practical way of living rather than a theoretical code.