EpictetusGreatest MaximsExplained

Epictetus never wrote any of this down. A former slave with a lame leg, he taught at Nicopolis after Domitian drove the philosophers out of Rome, and a student, Arrian, kept notes. Here are 95 passages from the Discourses, the Enchiridion and five Fragments, in 9 chapters, two pages each.

Each passage is printed as P. E. Matheson translated it in 1916, cited underneath. On Day 63 a nurse strikes the stone a child tripped over, and the interpretation follows that reflex into your own week. Today's Practice comes last: on Day 9, nothing that stings gets answered for ten minutes.

Plenty of what circulates as Epictetus is not his. Matheson ran 723 one-line summaries down his margins, and those tidy lines are the ones that travel. All of them are gone, with the fragments his edition marks as doubtful. Where Epictetus is cold, as in his advice on sitting with a grieving friend on Day 13, the page says so.

Marcus Aurelius read him and quotes him in his notebook. Marcus Aurelius Greatest Meditations Explained and Seneca Greatest Letters Explained use the same two-page pattern for the emperor's notes and Seneca's letters; this is the teacher. Greatest Stoic Quotes of All Time gathers 152 shorter lines from the whole school.