Enchiridion

Some things are within our power, while others are not. Within our power are opinion, motivation, desire, aversion, and, in a word, whatever is of our own doing; not within our power are our body, our property, reputation, office, and, in a word, whatever is not of our own doing.

Epictetus, Enchiridion, 1, after Elizabeth Carter

What it is

Epictetus was a freed slave who taught philosophy at Nicopolis in Greece around the year 100. He wrote nothing. His student Arrian took down the lectures, publishing them as the Discourses, and then boiled them down into this handbook. It is fifty three numbered paragraphs, most of them a few sentences long, and the first one contains the rest.

Where to start

At the beginning. This is the one Stoic book that reads in order. The first paragraph sets out the division between what is up to us and what is not; the remaining fifty two are ways of applying it to grief, ambition, dinner parties, illness and death.

Which translation

Elizabeth Carter’s 1758 translation is in the public domain, is clear, and is the one most later versions borrow from. Robin Hard (Oxford World’s Classics) and A. A. Long (How to Be Free, Princeton) are the modern choices; Long prints the Greek on the facing page. Avoid editions that call it “The Art of Living” and rewrite the text as advice.

After this

The Discourses are the lectures this was cut from. The Meditations are what it looks like when a reader takes the handbook seriously for forty years.