Discourses and Encheiridion

EPICTETUS Discourses and Encheiridion The Stoic philosopher Epictetus was born about 50 A.D., at Hierapolis, in Phrygia, at that time a Roman province of Asia Minor, and was at first a slave in Rome. On being freed he devoted himself to philosophy, and thereafter lived and taught at Nicopolis, in Epirus (then a portion of Macedonia, corresponding to Albania to-day), from about 90 A.D. to 138 A.D. He left no works, but his utterances have been collected in four books of "Discourses" or "Dissertations" by his pupil and friend Arrian. In the "Encheiridion Epictete"--a "Handbook to Epictetus" compiled and condensed from the chaos of the almost verbatim "Discourses"--Arrian gives the most authentic account of the philosophy of the Greek and Roman Stoics, the sect founded by Zeno about 300 years before the Christian era, which flourished until the decline of Rome.