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

It says something about the fame of this frugal teacher that after his death, an admirer—who clearly didn’t mind having something that could be taken from him—would purchase Epictetus’s earthen lamp for three thousand drachmas.

Yet even with this rejection of materialism, Epictetus was cautious not to let his self-discipline become a vice, to become some sort of contest with other people. “When you have accustomed your body to a frugal regime,” he said, “don’t put on airs about it, and if you only drink water, don’t broadcast the fact all the time. And if you ever want to go in for endurance training, do it for yourself and not for the world to see.” Progress is wonderful. Self-improvement is a worthy endeavor. But it should be done for its own sake—not for congratulations or recognition.

Epictetus never had children, but we know he adopted a young orphan and raised him to adulthood. It is haunting then, to imagine him practicing steeling himself against the loss even of the joy being a father brought him. As we learn from Marcus Aurelius, who himself would lose seven children in his lifetime:

As you kiss your son good night, says Epictetus, whisper to yourself, “He may be dead in the morning.” Don’t tempt fate, you say. By talking about a natural event? Is fate tempted when we speak of grain being reaped?

It cannot have been easy for Epictetus to think these thoughts about a boy he loved, but he knew from experience that life was cruel. He wished to remind himself that his precious son was not his possession, nor were his friends or his students or his health. The fate of these things remained, for the most part, outside his control. Which for a Stoic means only one thing: Cherish them while we have them, but accept that they belong to us only in trust, that they can depart at any moment. Because they can. And so can we.

This was what Epictetus practiced philosophy for. A man who had seen life in real and hard terms had no room or time for dialectics or for sophistry. He wanted strategies for getting better, for dealing with what was likely to happen to a person in the course of a day or in an empire ruled, far too often, by tyrants.

If this practical bent put him at odds with other Stoics, so be it. “What is the work of virtue?” he asked. “A well-flowing life. Who, then, is making progress? The person who has read the many works of Chrysippus? What, is virtue nothing more than that? To have attained a great knowledge of Chrysippus?”

Action was what mattered. Not reading. Not memorization. Not even publishing impressive writing of your own. Only working toward being a better person, a better thinker, a better citizen. “I can’t call a person a hard worker just because I hear they read and write,” Epictetus said, “even if working at it all night. Until I know what a person is working for, I can’t deem them industrious. . . . I can, if the end they work for is their own ruling principle, having it be and remain in constant harmony with Nature.”

As a thinker and a teacher, Epictetus preached humility. “It’s impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks they already know,” he said. In Zen, there is a parable of a master and a student who sit down to tea. The master fills up the cup until it overfills. This cup is like your mind, he says. If it is full, it cannot accept anything more. “It’s this whole conceit of knowing something useful that we ought to cast aside before we come to philosophy,” Epictetus would say, “. . . otherwise we will never come near to making any progress, even if we plow through all the primers and treatises of Chrysippus with those of Antipater and Archedemus thrown in.”

So each morning Epictetus had a dialogue with himself, checking his progress, evaluating whether he had properly steeled himself for what may come. It was then that he journaled or recited philosophy to himself. “Every day and night keep thoughts like these at hand,” he advised, “write them, read them aloud, talk to yourself and others about them.”

While other Romans were getting up early to pay obeisance to some patron or to further their careers, Epictetus wanted to look in the mirror, to hold himself accountable, to focus on where he was falling short. “What do I lack in order to achieve tranquility? What to achieve calm?” he would ask. “‘Where did I go wrong?’ in matters conducive to serenity? ‘What did I do’ that was unfriendly, or unsocial, or unfeeling? ‘What to be done was left undone’ in regard to these matters?”

Epictetus would die around 135 AD. Although he had been born into anonymity and slavery and would die of causes and in circumstances not known to us, it was never in doubt that his legacy would survive.