Epictetus was born a slave in Hierapolis, in what is now Turkey, around 50 CE. He was brought to Rome as the property of Epaphroditus, a freed man who worked as secretary to Emperor Nero. Ancient sources say Epaphroditus once twisted Epictetus's leg to test his Stoic calm. Epictetus reportedly said, evenly, 'You are going to break it.' The leg broke. Epictetus said, 'Did I not tell you it would break?' He walked with a limp for the rest of his life. When Emperor Domitian threw the philosophers out of Rome in 89 CE, Epictetus, by then freed, walked to Nicopolis in northwestern Greece. There he started a school that drew students from across the Roman world, including young men of senatorial and equestrian rank, the future rulers of the empire. He died around 135 CE. He owned almost nothing and wrote nothing himself, yet he produced what many historians of philosophy consider the most important Stoic texts we have.
Epictetus wrote nothing. His Discourses, four of the original eight books survive, were written down by his student Arrian of Nicomedia. Arrian also wrote the Enchiridion, a short summary of Epictetus's core teachings and one of the most compact and powerful texts in the history of philosophy. The Enchiridion opens with the sentence that every Stoic practice grows from: 'Some things are in our control and others not. Things in our control are opinion, pursuit, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever are our own actions. Things not in our control are body, reputation, command, and, in one word, whatever are not our own actions.' This line marks the dichotomy of control, and we will cover it fully in Lesson 5. But it starts here, with a man who had lived its truth in the hardest way possible.
The Discourses sound different from Seneca's letters and Marcus's journal. They are lectures: sometimes blunt, often in-your-face, always direct. Epictetus had no time for showing off. His students were the children of the Roman ruling class, and he knew their biggest risk was not poverty or defeat but the conceit of thinking they were already wise. He taught the way Socrates did, asking questions until a student's assumptions fell apart. 'What is the good?' he would ask. When they said 'pleasure,' he took it apart. When they said 'virtue,' he told them to show it in how they actually lived. The Discourses are the closest thing we have to hearing a Stoic master teach out loud, in the moment.
One of Epictetus's most important ideas is prohairesis: your will, your power of moral choice, the most human thing about you. Prohairesis is the one thing no one can take. Your body can be enslaved, your reputation ruined, your wealth seized, your family killed. But your prohairesis, your power to choose how you read what happens to you, stays yours as long as you are alive. For Epictetus, the whole point of philosophical training was to take full ownership of this power. Most people give it away constantly, letting events, insults, other people's opinions, and their own passions run their inner life. The Stoic takes it back.