Recorded oral teaching
Discourses, Book IV
It culminates in the long discourse "About freedom" (IV.1): only he is free who lives as he wishes because he desires nothing that is not up to him. Chapters (13): 1. About freedom; 2. Of familiar intimacy; 3. What things we should exchange for other things; 4. To those who are desirous of passing life in tranquillity; 5. Against the quarrelsome and ferocious; 6. Against those who lament over being pitied; 7. On freedom from fear; 8. Against those who hastily rush into the philosophic dress; 9. To a person who had been changed to a character of shamelessness; 10. What things we ought to despise and what to value; 11. About purity; 12. On attention; 13. Against those who readily tell their own affairs.
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Authorship note
Epictetus wrote nothing. The Discourses are notes of his lectures taken by his pupil Flavius Arrian, who says in the prefatory letter to Lucius Gellius that he transcribed them word for word; the language (colloquial Koine, unlike the Attic of Arrian's own works) supports the view that they preserve the master's voice, though the selection and final wording are Arrian's. A minority of scholars (Robert Dobbin) has argued that Epictetus wrote them himself.
Editions and translations
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English
Epictetus
The Discourses of Epictetus; with the Encheiridion and Fragments
The Conscious LibraryThe Discourses of Epictetus; with the Encheiridion and Fragments
George Bell and Sons; Wikisource, 1877
Translation: George Long
Dominio público.
Español
Disertaciones por Arriano
Gredos (Biblioteca Clásica Gredos, 185), 1993
Translation: Paloma Ortiz García
ISBN 9788424916282
Introducción, traducción y notas.
Other works by Epictetus
- Discourses (as reported by Arrian) · 108
- Discourses, Book I · 108
- Discourses, Book II · 108
- Discourses, Book III · 108
- Handbook (Enchiridion) · 130
- Fragments
- Discourses, Books V–VIII (lost) · 108
- Conversations (lost)
- Life and Death of Epictetus (by Arrian, lost)
- Debate of the Emperor Hadrian and the Philosopher Epictetus
- Christian paraphrases of the Handbook
- Simplicius' Commentary on the Handbook · 530
Sources
- Epicteto. Disertaciones (por Arriano) y Manual. Texto griego en Wikisource en griego; trad. inglesa de George Long, The Discourses of Epictetus; with the Encheiridion and Fragments (Londres: George Bell, 1877), en Wikisource en inglés.
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