Note on the Greek Text

Base text. This edition follows Heinrich Schenkl’s 1916 Greek text through the digital transcriptions of the Perseus Digital Library and Open Epictetus, using the standard 53-chapter division. Gerard Boter’s 1999 edition is the current critical text. At the points where Boter diverges from Schenkl, none changes the sense translated here.

Chapter 29. Schenkl prints this chapter in brackets. It is absent from part of the manuscript tradition and closely parallels Discourses 3.15.1–13, from which it was likely imported. It is retained here and marked with an asterisk.

Chapter 53 sources. The closing citations are Cleanthes fr. 527 (SVF I), quoted in a Latin version by Seneca at Letters 107.11; Euripides fr. 965 Nauck; Plato, Crito 43d; and Plato, Apology 30c–d. The final line of Cleanthes’ quatrain as Epictetus gives it – “And if I turn coward and refuse, I will follow all the same” – is transmitted only through Epictetus.

Typography. The ano teleia (·) has been restored for the Greek high stop. Guillemets are kept as in Schenkl, and the Greek question mark (;) is retained.