Page:Discourses of Epictetus volume 1 Oldfather 1925.djvu/18

 Indoctum, 13); accordingly his life must have covered roughly the period ca. A.D. 50-120, with which limits the rare and rather vague references to contemporary events agree. He was, accordingly, an almost exact contemporary of Plutarch and Tacitus.

Like Socrates and others whom he admired, he wrote nothing for publication, and but little memory would have survived of him had not a faithful pupil, successful as historian and administrator, Flavius Arrian, recorded many a discourse and informal conversation. These are saved to us in four books of Διατριβαί, or Discourses, out of the original eight, and in a very brief compendium, the Ἐγχειρίδιον, a Manual or Handbook, in which, xii