Epictetus

Epictetus was born a slave, around AD 50, in Hierapolis in Phrygia, in what is now western Turkey. His very name, Epiktetos, means "acquired". As a young man he belonged to Epaphroditus, a powerful freedman in the service of the emperor Nero, and was allowed to attend the lectures of Musonius Rufus, the leading Stoic teacher in Rome. An ancient story says that his master once twisted his leg, and that Epictetus calmly warned him he would break it; when it broke, he said only, "Did I not tell you?" Whether or not the tale is true, he was lame for the rest of his life.

After he gained his freedom he taught philosophy in Rome, until the emperor Domitian expelled the philosophers from the city around 93. Epictetus moved to Nicopolis in Epirus, on the western coast of Greece, and opened a school that soon became famous. Young men came from all over the empire to hear him, and the emperor Hadrian is said to have visited him. He lived simply, owned almost nothing, and taught until his death, around 135.

Like Socrates, whom he revered above all others, Epictetus wrote nothing. His pupil Arrian of Nicomedia, later a consul and the historian of Alexander the Great, took down his lectures in their own lively, conversational Greek and published them as the Discourses, of which four books survive. Arrian also drew from them a short summary of the essential teaching, the Encheiridion — "that which is ready to hand" — the Handbook.

At the centre of that teaching is a single distinction: some things are up to us, our judgments, desires and choices, and some are not, our body, property, reputation and office. Freedom and peace of mind come from attending wholly to the first and accepting the second as they come. The Handbook was read by Marcus Aurelius, adapted for Christian monks in late antiquity, translated into Latin by Angelo Poliziano in the Renaissance, and studied by Montaigne, Pascal and Frederick the Great. It remains one of the most widely read works of practical philosophy ever written.