Page:Discourses of Epictetus.djvu/22

xii at Hierapolis of Phrygia of poor parents, was indebted apparently for the advantages of a good education to the whim, which was common at the end of the Republic and under the first emperors, among the great of Rome to reckon among their numerous slaves Grammarians, Poets, Rhetoricians, and Philosophers, in the same way as rich financiers in these later ages have been led to form at a great cost rich and numerous libraries. This supposition is the only one which can explain to us, how a wretched child, born as poor as Irus, had received a good education, and how a rigid Stoic was the slave of Epaphroditus, one of the officers of the Imperial guard. For we cannot suspect that it was through predilection for the Stoic doctrine and for his own use, that the confidant and the minister of the debaucheries of Nero would have desired to possess such a slave.”

Some writers assume that Epictetus was manumitted by his master; but I can find no evidence for this statement. Epaphroditus accompanied Nero when he fled from Rome before his enemies, and he aided the miserable tyrant in killing himself. Domitian (Sueton. Domit. 14) afterwards put Epaphroditus to death for this service to Nero. We may conclude that Epictetus in some way obtained his freedom, and that he began to teach at Rome; but after the expulsion of the philosophers from Rome by Domitian 89, he retired to Nicopolis in Epirus, a city built by Augustus to commemorate the victory at Actium. Epictetus opened a school or lecture room at Nicopolis, where he taught till he was an old man. The time of his death is unknown. Epictetus was never married, as we learn from Lucian (Demonax, c. 55, Tom. ii. ed. Hemsterh. p. 393). When Epictetus was finding fault with Demonax aud advising him to take a wife and beget children, for this also, as Epictetus said, was a philosopher's duty, to