Epictetus was born a slave in Hierapolis (modern Turkey) around 50 CE. He was brought to Rome as property of Epaphroditus, a freedman who served as secretary to Emperor Nero. Ancient sources report that Epaphroditus once twisted Epictetus's leg to test his Stoic composure. Epictetus reportedly said, calmly, '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 expelled philosophers from Rome in 89 CE, Epictetus was freed and walked to Nicopolis in northwestern Greece, where he founded a school that attracted students from across the Roman world — including young men of senatorial and equestrian rank, the future ruling class of the empire. He died around 135 CE, having owned almost nothing, having written nothing himself, and having produced what many historians of philosophy consider the most important Stoic texts in existence.
Epictetus wrote nothing. His Discourses — four books of them survive out of an original eight — were transcribed by his student Arrian of Nicomedia, who also wrote the Enchiridion: a summary of Epictetus's essential teachings compressed into one of the most concise and powerful documents in philosophical history. The Enchiridion opens with the sentence that is the seed from which all Stoic practice grows: '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 distinction — the dichotomy of control — will be explored in full in Lesson 5. But it originates here, with a slave who had experienced its truth in the most visceral way possible.
The Discourses are different in tone from both Seneca's letters and Marcus's meditations. They are lectures — sometimes abrupt, often confrontational, always direct. Epictetus had no patience for philosophical performance. His students were the children of the Roman ruling class, and he knew their greatest danger was not poverty or defeat but the vanity of thinking themselves already wise. His method was Socratic: he would pose questions until his students' assumptions collapsed. 'What is the good?' he would ask. When they said 'pleasure,' he would dismantle it. When they said 'virtue,' he would demand they demonstrate it in their actual lives. The Discourses survive as the closest thing we have to the actual voice of a Stoic master teaching in real time.
One of Epictetus's most important teachings is the concept of prohairesis — the will, the faculty of moral choice, the power of decision that is our most essentially human attribute. Prohairesis is what cannot be taken from you. Your body can be enslaved, your reputation can be destroyed, your wealth can be confiscated, your family can be killed. But your prohairesis — your capacity to choose how you interpret what happens to you — remains yours as long as you are alive. For Epictetus, the entire purpose of philosophical training was to take full possession of this faculty. Most people give it away constantly, allowing events, insults, other people's opinions, and their own passions to dictate their inner state. The Stoic reclaims it.