ABSTRACT
Epictetus (pronounced Epic-TEE-tus) was an exponent of Stoicism who flourished in the early second century AD about 400 years after the Stoic school of Zeno of Citium was established in Athens. (He was probably born sometime around AD 55, and died about AD 135.) He lived and worked, first as a student and teacher in Rome, and then as a teacher with his own school in Nicopolis in Greece. Our knowledge of his philosophy and his method as a teacher comes to us via two works composed by his student Arrian, the Discourses and the Handbook. Although Epictetus based his teaching on the works of the early Stoics (none of which survives) which dealt with the three branches of Stoic thought, logic, physics and ethics, the Discourses and the Handbook concentrate almost exclusively on ethics.
