LIFE AND VIEWS OF EPICTETUS (_continued._)
Of the life of Epictetus, as distinct from his opinions, there is
unfortunately little more to be told. The life of
"That halting slave, who in Nicopolis
Taught Arrian, when Vespasian's brutal son
Cleared Rome of what most shamed him,"
is not an eventful life, and the conditions which surrounded it are very
circumscribed. Great men, it has been observed, have often the shortest
biographies; their real life is in their books.
At some period of his life, but how or when we do not know, Epictetus
was manumitted by his master, and was henceforward regarded by the world
as free. Probably the change made little or no difference in his life.
If it saved him from a certain amount of brutality, if it gave him more
uninterrupted leisure, it probably did not in the slightest degree
modify the hardships of his existence, and may have caused him some
little anxiety as to the means of procuring the necessaries of life. He,
of all men, would have attached the least importance to the external
conditions under which he lived; he always regarded them as falling
under the category of things which lay beyond the sphere of his own
influence, and therefore as things with which he had nothing to do.
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