It may sound strange to the reader that one situated as Epictetus was
should yet have had a regular tutor to train him in Stoic doctrines.
That such should have been the case appears at first sight inconsistent
with the cruelty with which he was treated, but it is a fact which is
capable of easy explanation. In times of universal luxury and
display--in times when a sort of surface-refinement is found among all
the wealthy--some sort of respect is always paid to intellectual
eminence, and intellectual amusements are cultivated as well as those of
a coarser character. Hence a rich Roman liked to have people of literary
culture among his slaves; he liked to have people at hand who would get
him any information which he might desire about books, who could act as
his amanuenses, who could even correct and supply information for his
original compositions. Such learned slaves formed part of every large
establishment, and among them were usually to be found some who bore, if
they did not particularly merit, the title of "philosophers." These
men--many of whom are described as having been mere impostors,
ostentatious pedants, or ignorant hypocrites--acted somewhat like
domestic chaplains in the houses of their patrons.
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