Epaphroditus

It's the sort of word you might use for a thing someone adds to their possessions.

As a young man, he ended up in Rome, in the household of Epaphroditus, a former slave of Nero's who had risen to become one of his most powerful secretaries.

It was the world of the imperial court at its murkiest.

Favors, fears, intrigues, men who gave the orders one day and fell from grace the next.

Epictetus saw it all from below, from the place of the one who waits at table and listens without anyone paying him the slightest attention.

Years later, he would tell his class about a scene from that house.

Epaphroditus owned a slave, a shoemaker, who was no use to him, so he sold him.

As chance would have it, the man ended up in the emperor's household and became Caesar's shoemaker.

One.

I suppose that by my books of the antiquity of the Jews, most excellent Epaphroditus, have made it evident to those who peruse them that our Jewish nation is of very great antiquity and had a distinct subsistence of its own originality.

As also I have therein declared how we came to inhabit this country wherein we now live.

Those antiquities contain the history of five thousand years and are taken out of our sacred books, but are translated by me into the Greek tongue.

Against Appion by Flavius Josephus, translated by William Wiston.

Book 2, sections 1 through 4.

In the former book, most honored Epaphroditus, I have demonstrated our antiquity and confirmed the truth of what I have said from the writings of the Phoenicians and the Chaldeans and the Egyptians.

I have, moreover, produced many of the Grecian writings as witnesses thereto.

While still very young, he was taken to Rome.

His owner was called Epaphroditus, and he was no ordinary master.

He had once been a slave himself, had won his freedom, and had risen to become one of the secretaries of the Emperor Nero, a man who handled petitions, favors, and secrets at the very heart of power.

In his house, Epictetus saw at close quarters how those who had everything lived, and he saw something few people ever see, how frightened they were.

Epaphroditus allowed him something unusual.

He let him attend the classes of Musonius Rufus, the great Stoic teacher in Rome, and there that young slave, lame with no money and no future, found what nobody could buy him or take from him, a way of looking at life.

Musonius was not a gentle teacher.

The first attachment a Stoic learns to let go of is attachment to things.

He was a, he was a professor at a, a- at a war college or a professor at an Ivy League university where, where he really is teaching and preparing the future masters of the universe for their inevitable role in society.

And, you know, he had, as a, as a young boy, he had a front row seat on the court of Nero, you know, working for Epaphroditus, and he tells these great stories about things he saw, and they're not very flattering.

[laughs]

Sure.

Epiketetus was a slave.

His owner, Epaphroditus, broke his leg deliberately, just to demonstrate his power over him.

Epiketetus' response, by his own account, was to tell Epaphroditus calmly that the leg was breaking.

When it broke, he simply noted that he'd said it would.

O.

Will.

Inc.'s concept of extreme ownership.

You are responsible for every action within your power.

The date of the birth of Epictetus is unknown.

The only recorded fact of his early life is that he was a slave in Rome, and his master was Epaphroditus, a profligate freedman of the Emperor Nero.

There is a story that the master broke his slave's leg by torturing him, but it is better to trust to the evidence of Simplicius, the commentator on the Enchiridion, or Manual, who says that Epictetus was weak in body and lame from an early age.

It is not said how he became a slave, but it has been asserted in modern times that his parents sold the child.

It may seem strange that such a master should have wished to have his slave made into a philosopher, but Garnier, the author of Mémoires sur les ouvrages d'Epictète, explains this matter very well in a communication to Schweighauser.

Garnier says, quote, Epictetus, born at Hierapolis of Phrygia, of poor parents, was indebted apparently for the advantages of a good education to the whim, which was common at the end of the Republic and under the first emperors among the great of Rome, to reckon among their numerous slaves grammarians, poets, rhetoricians, and philosophers, in the same way as rich financiers in these later ages have been led to form at a great cost rich and numerous libraries.

This supposition is the only one which can explain to us how a wretched child, born as poor as Iris, had received a good education, and how a rigid Stoic was the slave of Epaphroditus, one of the officers of the Imperial Guard.

For we cannot suspect that it was through predilection for the Stoic doctrine, and for his own use, that the confidant and the minister of the debaucheries of Nero would have desired to possess such a slave.

The first is Epictetus, a former slave.

His master, a man named Epaphroditus, was reportedly twisting his leg one day, torturing him.

Epictetus said calmly, you are going to break it.

Epaphroditus continued.

Epictetus said, did I not tell you that you would break it? And when it broke, Epictetus simply noted that he had told him so.

The point is not that he felt no pain.

One.

I suppose that by my books of the antiquity of the Jews, most excellent Epaphroditus, have made it evident to those who peruse them that our Jewish nation is of very great antiquity, and had a distinct subsistence of its own originality.

As also, I have therein declared how we came to inhabit this country wherein we now live.

Those antiquities contain the history of five thousand years, and are taken out of our sacred books, but are translated by me into the Greek tongue.

Against Appion by Flavius Josephus, translated by William Whiston.

Book two, sections one through four.

In the former book, most honored Epaphroditus, I have demonstrated our antiquity, and confirmed the truth of what I have said from the writings of the Phoenicians and the Chaldeans and the Egyptians.

I have, moreover, produced many of the Grecian writings as witnesses thereto.

The date of the birth of Epictetus is unknown.

The only recorded fact of his early life is that he was a slave in Rome and his master was Epaphroditus, a profligate freedman of the Emperor Nero.

There is a story that the master broke his slave's leg by torturing him, but it is better to trust to the evidence of Simplicius, the commentator on the Enchiridion, or Manual, who says that Epictetus was weak in body and lame from an early age.

It is not said how he became a slave, but it has been asserted in modern times that his parents sold the child.

It may seem strange that such a master should have wished to have his slave made into a philosopher, but Garnier, the author of Mémoires sur les ouvrages d'Epictète, explains this matter very well in a communication to Schweighauser.

Garnier says, quote, Epictetus, born at Hierapolis of Phrygia, of poor parents, was indebted apparently for the advantages of a good education to the whim, which was common at the end of the Republic and under the first emperors among the great of Rome, to reckon among their numerous slaves grammarians, poets, rhetoricians, and philosophers, in the same way as rich financiers in these later ages have been led to form at a great cost rich and numerous libraries.

This supposition is the only one which can explain to us how a wretched child, born as poor as Iris, had received a good education, and how a rigid Stoic was the slave of Epaphroditus, one of the officers of the Imperial Guard.

For we cannot suspect that it was through predilection for the Stoic doctrine and for his own use that the confidant and the minister of the debaucheries of Nero would have desired to possess such a slave, end quote.