Lesesaal

Handbook (Enchiridion)

Epictetus

Fifty-three short chapters condensing Epictetus' ethics as rules of conduct. It opens with the division "of things, some are up to us and others are not", goes on to the maxim that we are disturbed not by things but by our judgements about them (5), life as a role in a play written by another (17), the banquet at which one takes moderately what comes (15), piety (31) and the signs of one who is making progress (48), and ends with lines of Cleanthes and Euripides and words of Socrates. It has been the most read text of Epictetus since late antiquity: Simplicius commented on it, Byzantine monks adapted it, Poliziano translated it into Latin (1479) and el Brocense (1600) and Quevedo (1635) into Spanish.