Enchiridion. Arrian Epictetus

which, as necessarily in such a compendium of doctrine, is more Stoic than Epictetean, and suppresses many of the more amiable traits of personality. The actual man of the Discourses is a very much more attractive figure than the imaginary reconstruction of the man from the abstracted principles of the Manual; there he is a man, here a statue (Martha, 162 f.). It would go hard with many to have their personal traits deduced from the evidence supplied by the grammars, indices, or even confessions of faith that they have written; especially hard if the compendium were drawn up somewhat mechanically by another's hand.

      24. As expressed, e.g., in Seneca, De Prov. VI. 6: Hoc est quo deum antecedatis: ille exira patientiam malorum est, vos supra patientiam. Cf. also Zeller, 257.

      25. I am following here in the main, but not uniformly, Von Arnim's admirable snmmary.

      26. This triple division of philosophy, with especial but not exclusive application to ethics, is the only notably original element which the minute studies of many investigators have found in Epictetus, and it is rather a pedagogical device for lucid presentation than an innovation in thought. See Bonhöffer, 1890, 22 ff.; Zeller, p. 769; especially More, p. 107 f.

      27. On the use of this term, cf. More, p. 116, 12.

      28. Seneca, Ep. 91, 15. "Dass der Mensch ins Unvermeidliche sich füge, darauf dringen alle Religionen; jede sucht auf ihre Weise mit dieser Aufgabe fertig zu werden."—Goethe.

      29. Cf. Lagrange, p. 211.—"The school of the philosophers is a hospital" (cf. Epict. III. 23, 30).

      30. More, p. 167, and cf. the whole brilliant passage, p. 162 ff.

      31. Cf. Zeller. p. 770.

      32. Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, I. 21; 23.

      33. See More, p. 168 ff.

      34. A Byzantine scholiast in Schenkl² xv.

      35. "I find in Epictetus," says Pascal, "an incomparable art to disturb the repose of those who seek it in things external, and to force them to recognize that it is impossible for them to find anything but the error and the suffering which they are seeking to escape, if they do not give themselves without reserve to God alone."

      36. "For it is doubtful if there was ever a Christian of the early Church," remarks von Wilamowitz (Kultur der Gegenwart², I. 8, 244), "who came as close to the real teaching of Jesus as it stands in the synoptic gospels as did this Phrygian."

      37. The same was done again in the seventeenth century for the Carthusians by Matthias Mittner (1632), who took the first 35 of his 50 precepts Ad conservandam animi pacem from the Encheiridion. See Acta Erudit. 1726, 264.

      38. See Zanta's elaborate work upon the share taken by these men in the movement.

      39. B. Rand: The Life, etc., of Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury (author of the Characteristics), (1900), p. xi.

      40. For details see my forthcoming Contributions toward a Bibliography of Epictetus.

      41. For some account of a large number of these, see Schenkl², LV—LVIII. Their value is very slight indeed, and only for purposes of emendation, since as yet there seem to exist no authentic traces of the existence of a second early MS. of Epictetus, so that the Discourses must have survived the Middle Ages in only a single exemplar.

      Enchiridion, or the Manual

       Table of Contents

Preface

       Table of Contents

      This celebrated work is a compilation made by Arrian himself from the Discourses, and the great majority of those who know Epictetus at all have come to do so from this little book alone. That is a pity, because the necessary aridity and formalism of such a systematization obscure the more modest, human, and sympathetic aspects of the great teacher's character. Most of the unfavourable criticism which has been passed upon Epictetus—and there is some of this, although not much—is clearly based upon the occasionally somewhat inadequate impressions which any compendium must produce. For it may be doubted whether even so noble a statement as the Apostles' Creed has ever made a single convert.

      Occasionally Arrian has modified to a slight degree the form of statement, as we may observe from the numerous instances, amounting to somewhat more than half of the book, where material from the first four books of the Discourses has been employed; but the substance seems to have been faithfully preserved, wherever it is possible to follow his procedure in detail.

The separate editions and translations of the Encheiridion¹ are extremely numerous. Few, however, have been of any notable value, except, perhaps, the celebrated translations by Politian and Leopardi, and Schweighäuser's separate edition of 1798,² which is still the last independent critical text,³ and has been reprinted by most subsequent editors, even Schenkl, although the latter has added much useful critical material in his notes, especially those which indicate the probable sources of such passages as seem to be derived from the four books of the Discourses, and in particular has arranged the apparatus criticus in more convenient terms.

      The sigla which Schenkl has devised for Schweighäuser's apparatus, and which may occasionally be employed below, are the following:

---

A	MSS. in which portions of the Encheiridion precede the corresponding commentary of Simplicius.
V	The ed. of 1528.
C	MSS. containing the Encheiridion alone.
V	The edition of Trincavelli (1535).
D	MSS. of Class B which exhibit the text of the Encheiridion (frequently abbreviated) as lemmata before the commentary of Simplicius.
un.	unus.
nonn.	nonnulli.
sing.	singuli.
Nil.