The Discourses of Epictetus with Running Commentary - Book I, Chapter 30
WAS POSTED ON: Thursday, May 1, 2025 12:00 AM BY Shaun Baker
Thirtieth installment:
Arrian, a student of Epictetus, wrote eight books, The Discourses of Epictetus, of which four survive. Selections from those eight books were also collected in the Enchiridion, or "Handbook." The Discourses give us a quite vivid portrait of the man who inspired them, and also give us fascinating glimpses into his singular didactic style. We very quickly see how Epictetus ran his school, the nature of its curricula, and how he mentored his students. We see his earnestness, his zeal, and piety, but we also get a good dose of his sharp and often acerbic sense of humor. It is no wonder that Arrian felt he 'had to get this down.'
It also can be quite a challenge to understand exactly what is being said in the chapters of the Discourses. The text is composed of lecture notes, we must recall. The subject matter sometimes jumps from one subject to another, veering into matters that are not obviously related to what we have just read. Sometimes these tangential matters are finally related back to things brought up earlier, or to the main topic of the chapter. Sometimes they are not. This leaves the reader with the task of finding the connections. Epictetus deliberately ‘weaves’ in an almost conversational style. His is most certainly not the style of the tightly outlined academic’s essay. He does not write like Aristotle, nor, if we are to believe his own testimony, like the Stoic school’s founders (chief among them, Chrysippus). Yet, we can see, as we ride his ‘weave’ that he was quite versed in all aspects of the school’s doctrine.
So, with that genesis, and that style of writing in mind, I've set out to read through the four extant books, a chapter at a time, while also breaking up the text with commentary, (essentially my best guesses as to how we might flesh out some of his ‘weave,’ (what can be very brief or truncated sketches of dialogue and argumentation), as it was no easy business for Arrian to get down what he had experienced in the lecture halls of Nicopolis!
A last note: I use the Oldfather translation in the Loeb Classical Library, and have taken some editorial and interpretive liberties where I thought it necessary. But, I've tried to keep such changes to a minimum. The advantage of using this translation is that it can easily be accessed via various online sources, and given that it presents, along with Oldfather’s translation and footnotes, the text in the original Greek, it is quite useful for those that would like to check any translations or interpretations against the original.
Book I, Chapter 30
What Aid Ought We to Have Ready at Hand in Difficulties?
This brief and final chapter of Book I gives us a series of questions that, if rehearsed as they no doubt had been by students, would enable them to navigate those challenges to Moral Purpose that they would have invariably encountered as they entered public life.
Like the latter portion of chapter 29, these are cast as a Q and A with God himself. For that reason, it makes sense to read this final chapter as a continuation and wrap-up of the graduation commencement address that seems to have been presented in that chapter.
First, Epictetus offers a prefatory hypothetical, setting that dialogical stage:
When you come into the presence of some prominent man, remember that Another looks from above on what is taking place, and that you must please Him rather than this man.
Then the battery of divine questions from that ‘Other’ observer:
He, then, who is above asks of you, “In your school what did you call exile and imprisonment and bonds and death and disrepute?”
“I called them ‘things indifferent.’”
“What, then, do you call them now? Have they changed at all?”
“No.”
“Have you, then, changed?”
“No.”
“Tell me, then, what things are ‘indifferent.’”
“Those that are independent of the Moral Purpose.”
“Tell me also what follows.”
“Things independent of the Moral Purpose are nothing to me.”
“Tell me also what you thought were ‘the good things.’”
“A proper Moral Purpose and a proper use of external impressions.”
“And what was the ‘end’?”
“To follow Thee.”
“Do you say all that even now?”
“I say the same things even now.”
Now Epictetus enters into the dialogue, (perhaps wrapping up that commencement address of the previous chapter, after having given God a bit of time). He summarizes and concludes:
Then, enter in, full of confidence and mindful of all this, and you shall see what it means to be a young man who has studied what he ought, when he is in the presence of men who have not studied. As for me, by the gods, I fancy that you will feel somewhat like this:
“Why do we make such great and elaborate preparations to meet what amounts to nothing? Was this what authority amounted to? Was this what the vestibule, the chamberlains, the armed guards amounted to? Was it for all this that I listened to those long discourses? Why, all this never amounted to anything, but I was preparing for it as though it were something great.”
END
BOOK I
Category: Philosophy and History, Academics
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