Page:Encheiridion of Epictetus - Rolleston 1881.pdf/12

vi tion. Arrian also wrote a Life of Epictetus, now unfortunately lost. The few facts about him which we know with any approach to certainty are-that he was born at Hierapolis in Phrygia; that he became (how is unknown) slave to Epaphroditus, a freedman and favourite of Nero; that while in his master's service he attended the philosophic lectures of a Stoic, C. Musonius Rufus; that he somehow obtained his freedom, and was banished from Rome about the year 90 A.D., when the tyrant Domitian, by a public edict, 'cleared Rome of what most shamed him,' the teachers of philosophy; that he then settled in Nicopolis, a city of Epirus, where he taught publicly for many