Delphi Complete Works of Epictetus (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics Book 86)
Page 131
His influence has been extensive and has not yet waned. Hadrian was his friend, and, in the next generation, Marcus Aurelius was his ardent disciple. Celsus, Gellius, and Lucian lauded him, and Galen wrote a special treatise in his defence. His merits were recognized by Christians like Chrysostom, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Augustine, while Origen rated him in some respects even above Plato. His Manual, with a few simple changes, principally in the proper names, was adapted by two different Christian ascetics as a rule and guide of monastic life.
In modern times his vogue started rather slowly with translations by Perotti and Politian, but vernacular versions began to appear in the sixteenth century, and at the end of that century and the first part of the subsequent one, Epictetus was one of the most powerful forces in the movement of Neo-Stoicism, especially under the protagonists Justus Lipsius and Bishop Guillaume Du Vair. His work and the essays of Montaigne were the principal secular readings of Pascal, and it was with Epictetus and his disciple Marcus Aurelius that the Earl of Shaftesbury “was most thoroughly conversant.” Men as different as Touissant L’Ouverture and Landor, Frederick the Great and Leopardi, have been among his admirers. The number of editions and new printings of his works, or of portions or translations of the same averages considerably more than one for each year since the invention of printing. In the twentieth century, through the inclusion of Crossley’s Golden Sayings of Epictetus in Charles William Eliot’s Harvard Series of Classics, and of the Manual in Carl Hilty’s Glück, of which two works upwards of three hundred and fifty thousand copies had, at a recent date, been sold, it may safely be asserted that more copies of portions of his work have been printed in the last two decades than ever existed all told from his own day down to that time.
In concluding one can hardly refrain from translating a portion of the sincere and stirring passage in which Justus Lipsius, a great man and a distinguished scholar, paid Epictetus the tribute of his homage:
“So much for Seneca; another brilliant star arises, Epictetus, his second in time, but not in merit; comparable with him in the weight, if not in the bulk, of his writings; superior in his life. He was a man who relied wholly upon himself and God, but not on Fortune. In origin low and servile, in body lame and feeble, and in mind most exalted, and brilliant among the lights of every age. ...
“But few of his works remain: the Encheiridion, assuredly a noble piece, and as it were the soul of Stoic moral philosophy; besides that, the Discourses, which he delivered on the streets, in his house, and in the school, collected and arranged by Arrian. Nor are these all extant. ... But, so help me God, what a keen and lofty spirit in them! a soul aflame, and burning with love of the honourable! There is nothing in Greek their like, unless I am mistaken; I mean with such notable vigour and fire. A novice or one unacquainted with true philosophy he will hardly stir or affect, but when a man has made some progress or is already far advanced, it is amazing how Epictetus stirs him up, and though he is always touching some tender spot, yet he gives delight also. ... There is no one who better influences and shapes a good mind. I never read that old man without a stirring of my soul within me, and, as with Homer, I think the more of him each time I re-read him, for he seems always new; and even after I have returned to him I feel that I ought to return to him yet once more.”
LIST OF WORKS CITED
H. von Arnim, article “Epiktetos,” in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopädie 6, cols. 126–31
E. V. Arnold, article “Epictetus,” in Hastings’ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics 6, pf.
R. Asmus, Quaestiones Epicteteae,Freiburg i. B. 1888
R. Bentley’s critical notes on Arrian’s “Discourses of Epictetus,” Trans. Amer. Philol. Assoc. 1921, 53, p–52 (by W. A. Oldfather)
A. Bonhöffer, Epictet und die Stoa, Stuttgart 1890; Die Ethik des Stoikers Epictet, Stuttgart 1894; Epiktet und das Neue Testament, Giessen 1911
T. Colardeau, Etude sur Epictète, Paris 1903
O. Halbauer, De diatribis Epicteti, Leipzig 1911
K. Hartmann, “Arrian und Epiktet,” Neue Jahrb., 1905, 15, p–75
Fr.M. J. Iagrange, “La philosophie religieuse d’Epictète,” Revue Biblique 1912, pff.; 192ff.
J. Lipsius, Manuductio ad Stoicam philosophiam, I, xix, p–64, ed. Antwerp 1604; IV, pf., ed. Wesel 1625
C. Martha, Les moralistes sous l’empire romain, philosophes et poètes, Paris 1865, and often reprinted
P. E. More, Hellenistic Philosophies, Princeton 1923, “Epictetus,” p–171
R. Mucke, Zu Arrians und Epiktets Sprachgebrauch, Nordhausen 1887
B. Pascal, Entretien avec de Saci sur Epictète et Montaigne. First published in authentic form in M. Havet, Pensées de Pascal, Paris 1852, and frequently since then.
R. Renner, Das Kind: ein Gleichnismittel des Epiktets, Munich 1905
L. Zanta, La renaissance du stoicisme au xvi siècle, Paris 1914. La traduction française du Manuel d’Epictète d’André de Rivaudeau, Paris 1914
E. Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen, III.1 (Leipzig 1909), p–81; III.2 (1902), p–14
The Delphi Classics Catalogue
We are proud to present a listing of our complete catalogue of English titles, with new titles being added every month. Buying direct from our website means you can make great savings and take advantage of our instant Updates service. You can even purchase an entire series (Super Set) at a special discounted price.
Only from our website can readers purchase a complete Parts Edition of our titles. When you buy a Parts Edition, you will receive a folder of your chosen author’s works, with each novel, play, poetry collection, non-fiction book and more divided into its own special volume. This allows you to read individual novels etc. and to know precisely where you are in an eBook. For more information, please visit our Parts Edition page.
Series Contents
Series One
Anton Chekhov
Charles Dickens
D.H. Lawrence
Dickensiana Volume I
Edgar Allan Poe
Elizabeth Gaskell
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
George Eliot
H. G. Wells
Henry James
Ivan Turgenev
Jack London
James Joyce
Jane Austen
Joseph Conrad
Leo Tolstoy
Louisa May Alcott
Mark Twain
Oscar Wilde
Robert Louis Stevenson
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Walter Scott
The Brontës
Thomas Hardy
Virginia Woolf
Wilkie Collins
William Makepeace Thackeray
Series Two
Alexander Pushkin
Alexandre Dumas (English)
Andrew Lang
Anthony Trollope
Bram Stoker
Christopher Marlowe
Daniel Defoe
Edith Wharton
F. Scott Fitzgerald
G. K. Chesterton
Gustave Flaubert (English)
H. Rider Haggard
Herman Melville
Honoré de Balzac (English)
J. W. von Goethe (English)
Jules Verne
L. Frank Baum
Lewis Carroll
Marcel Proust (English)
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nikolai Gogol
O. Henry
Rudyard Kipling
Tobias Smollett
Victor Hugo
William Shakespeare
Series Three
Ambrose Bierce
Ann Radcliffe
Ben Jonson
Charles Lever
Émile Zola
Ford Madox Ford
Geoffrey Chaucer
George Gissing
George Orwell
Guy de Maupassant
H. P. Lovecraft
Henrik Ibsen
Henry David Thoreau
<
br /> Henry Fielding
J. M. Barrie
James Fenimore Cooper
John Buchan
John Galsworthy
Jonathan Swift
Kate Chopin
Katherine Mansfield
L. M. Montgomery
Laurence Sterne
Mary Shelley
Sheridan Le Fanu
Washington Irving
Series Four
Arnold Bennett
Arthur Machen
Beatrix Potter
Bret Harte
Captain Frederick Marryat
Charles Kingsley
Charles Reade
G. A. Henty
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Edgar Wallace
E. M. Forster
E. Nesbit
George Meredith
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Jerome K. Jerome
John Ruskin
Maria Edgeworth
M. E. Braddon
Miguel de Cervantes
M. R. James
R. M. Ballantyne
Robert E. Howard
Samuel Johnson
Stendhal
Stephen Crane
Zane Grey
Series Five
Algernon Blackwood
Anatole France
Beaumont and Fletcher
Charles Darwin
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Edward Gibbon
E. F. Benson
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Friedrich Nietzsche
George Bernard Shaw
George MacDonald
Hilaire Belloc
John Bunyan
John Webster
Margaret Oliphant
Maxim Gorky
Oliver Goldsmith
Radclyffe Hall
Robert W. Chambers
Samuel Butler
Samuel Richardson
Sir Thomas Malory
Thomas Carlyle
William Harrison Ainsworth
William Dean Howells
William Morris
Series Six
Anthony Hope
Aphra Behn
Arthur Morrison
Baroness Emma Orczy
Captain Mayne Reid
Charlotte M. Yonge
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
E. W. Hornung
Ellen Wood
Frances Burney
Frank Norris
Frank R. Stockton
Hall Caine
Horace Walpole
One Thousand and One Nights
R. Austin Freeman
Rafael Sabatini
Saki
Samuel Pepys
Sir Issac Newton
Stanley J. Weyman
Thomas De Quincey
Thomas Middleton
Voltaire
William Hazlitt
William Hope Hodgson
Series Seven
Adam Smith
Benjamin Disraeli
Confucius
David Hume
E. M. Delafield
E. Phillips Oppenheim
Edmund Burke
Ernest Hemingway
Frances Trollope
Galileo Galilei
Guy Boothby
Hans Christian Andersen
Ian Fleming
Immanuel Kant
Karl Marx
Kenneth Grahame
Lytton Strachey
Mary Wollstonecraft
Michel de Montaigne
René Descartes
Richard Marsh
Sax Rohmer
Sir Richard Burton
Talbot Mundy
Thomas Babington Macaulay
W. W. Jacobs
Series Eight
Anna Katharine Green
Arthur Schopenhauer
The Brothers Grimm
C. S. Lewis
Charles and Mary Lamb
Elizabeth von Arnim
Ernest Bramah
Francis Bacon
Gilbert and Sullivan
Grant Allen
Henryk Sienkiewicz
Hugh Walpole
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
John Locke
John Muir
Joseph Addison
Lafcadio Hearn
Lord Dunsany
Marie Corelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
Ouida
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Sigmund Freud
Theodore Dreiser
Walter Pater
W. Somerset Maugham
Series Nine
Aldous Huxley
August Strindberg
Booth Tarkington
C. S. Forester
Erasmus
Eugene Sue
Fergus Hume
George Moore
Gertrude Stein
Giovanni Boccaccio
Izaak Walton
J. M. Synge
Johanna Spyri
John Galt
Maurice Leblanc
Max Brand
Molière
Norse Sagas
R. D. Blackmore
R. S. Surtees
Sir Thomas More
Stephen Leacock
The Harvard Classics
Thomas Love Peacock
Thomas Paine
William James
Ancient Classics
Achilles Tatius
Aeschylus
Ammianus Marcellinus
Apollodorus
Appian
Apuleius
Apollonius of Rhodes
Aristophanes
Aristotle
Arrian
Athenaeus
Augustine
Aulus Gellius
Bede
Callimachus
Cassius Dio
Cato
Catullus
Cicero
Claudian
Clement of Alexandria
Cornelius Nepos
Demosthenes
Dio Chrysostom
Diodorus Siculus
Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Diogenes Laërtius
Epictetus
Euripides
Frontius
Fronto
Herodotus
Hesiod
Hippocrates
Homer
Horace
Isocrates
Josephus
Julian
Julius Caesar
Juvenal
Livy
Longus
Lucan
Lucian
Lucretius
Marcus Aurelius
Manetho
Martial
Nonnus
Ovid
Pausanias
Petronius
Pindar
Plato
Plautus
Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Younger
Plotinus
Plutarch
Polybius
Procopius
Propertius
Quintus Curtius Rufus
Quintus Smyrnaeus
Sallust
Sappho
Seneca the Younger
Septuagint
Sextus Empiricus
Sidonius
Sophocles
Statius
Strabo
Suetonius
Tacitus
Terence
Theocritus
Thucydides
Tibullus
Varro
Virgil
Xenophon
Delphi Poets Series
Adam Mickiewicz
A. E. Housman
Alexander Pope
Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Algernon Charles Swinburne
Andrew Marvell
Beowulf
Charlotte Smith
Christina Rossetti
D. H Lawrence (poetry)
Dante Alighieri (E
nglish)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Delphi Poetry Anthology
Edgar Allan Poe (poetry)
Edmund Spenser
Edward Lear
Edward Thomas
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Emily Dickinson
Epic of Gilgamesh
Ezra Pound
Friedrich Schiller (English)
George Chapman
George Herbert
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Gertrude Stein
Hafez
Heinrich Heine
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
Henry Lawson
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Isaac Rosenberg
James Russell Lowell
Johan Ludvig Runeberg
John Clare
John Donne
John Dryden
John Gower
John Keats
John Milton
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
Joseph Addison
Kahlil Gibran
Leigh Hunt
Lord Byron
Ludovico Ariosto
Luís de Camões
Matthew Arnold
Matthew Prior
Michael Drayton
Nikolai Nekrasov
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Petrarch
Rabindranath Tagore
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Robert Browning
Robert Burns
Robert Frost
Robert Southey
Rumi
Rupert Brooke
Sara Teasdale
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Sir Philip Sidney
Sir Thomas Wyatt
Sir Walter Raleigh
Thomas Chatterton
Thomas Gray
Thomas Hardy (poetry)
Thomas Hood
Thomas Moore
Torquato Tasso
T. S. Eliot
W. B. Yeats
Walter Savage Landor
Walt Whitman
Wilfred Owen
William Blake
William Cowper
William Wordsworth
Masters of Art
Albrecht Dürer
Amedeo Modigliani