Fragments
These Fragments are entitled “Epicteti Fragmenta maxime ex Ioanne Stobaeo, Antonio, et Maximo collecta” (ed. Schweig.). There are some notes and emendations on the Fragments; and a short dissertation on them by Schweighaeuser.
Nothing is known of Stobaeus nor of his time, except the fact that he has preserved some extracts of an ethical kind from the New Platonist Hierocles, who lived about the middle of the fifth century AD; and it is therefore concluded that Stobaeus lived after Hierocles. The fragments attributed to Epictetus are preserved by Stobaeus in his work entitled Ἁνφολόγιον, or Florilegium or Sermones.
Antonius Monachus, a Greek monk, also made a Florilegium, entitled Melissa (the bee). His date is uncertain, but it was certainly much later than the time of Stobaeus.
Maximus, also named the monk, and reverenced as a saint, is said to have been a native of Constantinople, and born about AD 580.
Some of the Fragments contained in the edition of Schweighaeuser are certainly not from Epictetus. Many of the fragments are obscure; but they are translated as accurately as I can translate them, and the reader must give to them such meaning as he can.
I
The life which is implicated with fortune (depends on fortune) is like a winter torrent: for it is turbulent, and full of mud, and difficult to cross, and tyrannical, and noisy, and of short duration.
II
A soul which is conversant with virtue is like an ever flowing source, for it is pure and tranquil and potable and sweet43 and communicative (social), and rich and harmless and free from mischief.
III
If you wish to be good, first believe that you are bad.
IV
It is better to do wrong seldom and to own it, and to act right for the most part, than seldom to admit that you have done wrong and to do wrong often.
V
Check (punish) your passions (πάφη), that you may not be punished by them.
VI
Do not so much be ashamed of that (disgrace) which proceeds from men’s opinion as fly from that which comes from the truth.
VII
If you wish to be well spoken of, learn to speak well (of others): and when you have learned to speak well of them, try to act well, and so you will reap the fruit of being well spoken of.
VIII
Freedom and slavery, the one is the name of virtue, and the other of vice: and both are acts of the will. But where there is no will, neither of them touches (affects) these things. But the soul is accustomed to be master of the body, and the things which belong to the body have no share in the will. For no man is a slave who is free in his will.44
IX
It is an evil chain, fortune (a chain) of the body, and vice of the soul. For he who is loose (free) in the body, but bound in the soul is a slave: but on the contrary he who is bound in the body, but free (unbound) in the soul, is free.
X
The bond of the body is loosened by nature through death, and by vice through money:45 but the bond of the soul is loosened by learning, and by experience and by discipline.
XI
If you wish to live without perturbation and with pleasure, try to have all who dwell with you good. And you will have them good, if you instruct the willing, and dismiss those who are unwilling (to be taught): for there will fly away together with those who have fled away both wickedness and slavery; and there will be left with those who remain with you goodness and liberty.
XII
It is a shame for those who sweeten drink with the gifts of the bees, by badness to embitter reason which is the gift of the gods.
XIII
No man who loves money, and loves pleasure, and loves fame, also loves mankind, but only he who loves virtue.
XIV
As you would not choose to sail in a large and decorated and gold-laden ship (or ship ornamented with gold), and to be drowned; so do not choose to dwell in a large and costly house and to be disturbed (by cares).
XV
When we have been invited to a banquet, we take what is set before us: but if a guest should ask the host to set before him fish or sweet cakes, he would be considered to be an unreasonable fellow. But in the world we ask the Gods for what they do not give; and we do this though the things are many which they have given.
XVI
They are amusing fellows, said he (Epictetus), who are proud of the things
