The Golden Sayings of Epictetus

Overview

About a hundred pages, not itself an original work composed by Epictetus but a Victorian-era anthology assembled by Hastings Crossley in 1909, selecting and thematically arranging the most quotable and most characteristic passages from the surviving records of Epictetus’s teaching, the Discourses and the shorter Handbook, both of which themselves derive entirely from notes taken by Epictetus’s student Arrian rather than from anything Epictetus wrote directly, since Epictetus, following a common practice among ancient philosophical teachers, apparently composed nothing himself and taught entirely through spoken lecture and dialogue with his students. This particular selection was printed in the Harvard Classics series alongside Marcus Aurelius and Plato, becoming, for generations of English-language readers working through that series, many readers’ first substantial introduction to Stoic philosophy.

Crossley’s organizational method arranges the selected passages thematically rather than following the original sequence of Epictetus’s books, which means the same core doctrines recur repeatedly throughout the collection in varied phrasing and varied illustrative example, a structure that reinforces Epictetus’s central teachings through genuine repetition but that also means, as even sympathetic readers have long noted, this anthology functions considerably better as an accessible first introduction to Stoic ideas than as a substitute for reading a complete book of the actual Discourses in their original, more extended and more developed form.

The argument

Judgments, not events. Epictetus’s foundational and most consistently repeated claim across the selection holds that human beings are disturbed not by events themselves but by their own judgments and opinions about those events, a position Epictetus illustrates repeatedly with varied examples, arguing that even death, which might seem objectively terrible, carries no inherent terror in itself, since if it did it would have appeared terrible to every person who has ever faced it calmly, Socrates above all.

What is and is not up to us. The selection returns constantly to Epictetus’s central practical distinction, drawn most directly from the opening of the Handbook, between what genuinely lies within our own power, our opinions, choices, desires and aversions, and what does not, our bodies, our property, our reputation and the actions of other people, insisting that genuine peace of mind depends entirely on correctly locating our actual concern and effort within the first category rather than mistakenly investing it in the second.

The actor who did not choose his part. Among Epictetus’s most memorable and most frequently repeated images across the selection, the comparison of human life to a play whose length and character have already been determined by another author reconciles accepting an unchosen fate with maintaining genuine freedom in how that fate is actually lived out, insisting that while choosing our particular role, whether short or long, humble or exalted, is not within our power, acting that assigned role well entirely is.

Obstacles as material for virtue. Epictetus repeatedly reframes adversity and obstacle not as pure misfortune to be merely endured but as genuine material and opportunity for practicing specific virtues, courage in the face of danger, patience under hardship, arguing that a person who has trained himself to treat every circumstance this way has found a form of freedom no external power can actually obstruct or take away.

The uselessness of complaint. Running throughout the selection is Epictetus’s consistent dismissal of complaint and blame directed at external circumstance or at other people, treating such complaint as a direct symptom of the underlying error, misplacing concern in what is not actually within our power, that his entire teaching exists to correct.

How to read it

Read this anthology as a genuinely useful first introduction to core Stoic concepts rather than as a substitute for the fuller, more developed argument and context a complete book of Epictetus’s actual Discourses provides; the thematic arrangement’s repetition reinforces central ideas effectively but necessarily sacrifices the extended reasoning and specific dialogic context of the original teaching sessions.

Notice how consistently the selection’s varied passages return to the same small set of core distinctions, judgment versus event, what is and is not up to us, obstacle as opportunity, and consider this repetition itself as evidence of how genuinely central these few ideas were to Epictetus’s actual teaching, rather than as mere editorial redundancy.

Pay attention to the recurring theatrical and practical images, the actor’s assigned part, the obstacle as training material, since these concrete, memorable illustrations are doing real philosophical work, translating Epictetus’s abstract distinctions into vivid, easily retained form suited to his original oral teaching context.

Consider Epictetus’s own biography, born into slavery and only later gaining freedom, as relevant context for his teaching’s persistent emphasis on locating genuine freedom entirely within one’s own judgments and responses rather than in external circumstance, a philosophy developed by someone who had direct, lived experience of circumstances entirely outside his own control.

Read this anthology as a starting point that should lead toward Epictetus’s actual complete Discourses or Handbook, or toward Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations, a text directly influenced by Epictetus’s teaching, for readers who find the core Stoic ideas presented here genuinely compelling and want to encounter them in more extended, more fully argued original form.

Questions it raises

• Does Epictetus’s foundational claim, that disturbance comes from judgment rather than from events themselves, hold up as a complete account of human suffering, or does it understate the genuine, direct impact certain events, physical pain, genuine loss, can have independent of how they are judged or interpreted?
• How does knowing Epictetus’s own biography, born into slavery before eventually gaining freedom, change how a reader receives his teaching that genuine freedom lies entirely in our own judgments rather than in external circumstance? Does this biographical context strengthen or complicate the philosophy’s universal applicability?
• What are the practical limits of the distinction between what is and is not up to us? Are there circumstances, chronic illness, systemic injustice, where this clean division between internal judgment and external circumstance becomes genuinely difficult to maintain or apply?
• Does this anthology’s thematic rather than sequential organization, repeating core doctrines across varied phrasing, serve readers well as an introduction, or does the resulting repetition risk oversimplifying ideas that receive more careful, extended development in Epictetus’s original, complete texts?
• How does the actor metaphor, accepting an unchosen role while maintaining freedom in how it is played, compare to other philosophical or religious frameworks for reconciling acceptance of circumstance with genuine human agency and freedom?
• Given that this anthology is itself a considerably mediated text, notes taken by a student, later selected and thematically rearranged by a Victorian editor, what confidence can a reader reasonably have in encountering something close to Epictetus’s actual original teaching, and does this mediation matter for evaluating the philosophy’s genuine persuasive force?