Lives of the Stoics: The Art of Living From Zeno to Marcus Aurelius

Born in 55 AD in Hierapolis, Epictetus knew slavery from birth. His name, in Greek, is quite literally “acquired one.” Somehow, despite this, his tenacity, his perspective, and his sheer self-sufficiency would make Epictetus—not just in his life, not just to the emperors he influenced, but in history and for all time—the ultimate symbol of the ability of human beings to find true freedom in the darkest of circumstances.

And they were dark circumstances. Epictetus was born the son of a slave woman in what is now modern Turkey, in a region that as part of the Roman Empire was subject to its brutal laws. One of those laws, Lex Aelia Sentia, made it impossible for slaves to be freed before their thirtieth birthday. It’s a disturbing irony that Augustus, then, who passed the law and was advised by not one but two Stoic philosophers, stole three decades from Epictetus’s life. As a young boy, Epictetus was purchased by a man named Epaphroditus—a former slave himself—who went on to become Nero’s secretary and served alongside Seneca. Two emperors, with three Stoic philosophers advising them, and apparently not so much as a question about whether it was right to own a human being.*

Hardly a shining moment of courage, justice, temperance, or wisdom . . .

Epictetus had little time to ponder the fairness of his fate. He was too busy being a slave. What he could do and couldn’t do was overtly controlled. The fruits of his labor were stolen, and his body abused—Rome was not known for treating its slaves gently. He was a vessel to be used up and then discarded, like a horse that was ridden into the ground and then put down.

That he even survived into adulthood is a surprise.

Even by Roman standards, Epictetus had a cruel master. Later Christian writers portray Epictetus’s master as violent and depraved, at one point twisting Epictetus’s leg with all his might. As a punishment? As a sick pleasure? Trying to get a disobedient young kid to follow instructions? We don’t know. All we hear is that Epictetus calmly warned him about taking it too far. When the leg snapped, Epictetus made no sound and cried no tears. He only smiled, looked at his master, and said, “Didn’t I warn you?”

Why does this make us shudder? Empathy or pain? A horror at the senselessness? Or is it at the sheer self-mastery?

With Epictetus it is all this and more.

All his life, Epictetus walked with a limp. We can’t be certain whether it came from this painful incident or another, but undoubtedly he was hobbled by slavery, yet somehow unbroken all the same. “Lameness is an impediment to the leg,” he would later say, “but not to the will.”

The Stoics believed we decided how we would react to what happened to us. Epictetus, as we each hold the power to do, chose to see his disability as only a physical impairment, and in fact it was that idea of choice, we shall see, that defined the core of his philosophical beliefs.

To Epictetus, no human was the full author of what happened in life. Instead, he said, it was as if we were in a play, and if it was the playwright’s “pleasure you should act a poor man, a cripple, a governor, or a private person, see that you act it naturally. For this is your business, to act well the character assigned you; to choose it is another’s.”

And so he did.

In Nero’s court in the 60s AD, Epictetus would have seen all of the opulence, insanity, and contradictions of Rome at that time. He would later tell a story of witnessing a man come to Epaphroditus begging for help because he was down to his last million and a half sesterces (at least $3 million in today’s dollars). Was it with sarcasm or genuine bafflement that Epictetus’s rich owner replied, “Dear man, how did you keep silent, how could you possibly endure it?”

It must have also been revealing for Epictetus to watch Epaphroditus—this man who had incredible power over him—contorting himself to remain on Nero’s good side, down to flattering even the man’s cobbler in hope of winning favor. He saw aspiring candidates for the office of consul working themselves to the bone to earn the position. He saw the gifts that were expected, the spectacles that had to be put on, the chain of offices that needed to be held for years in order to get ahead. That’s freedom? he must have thought. “For the sake of these mighty and dignified offices and honors you kiss the hands of another man’s slaves,” he wrote, “and are thus the slaves of men who are not free themselves.”

The rich in Rome were no different than the rich today: Despite all their wealth, ambition turns even a powerful person into a supplicant in the hope of gaining more.