Fragments of Epictetus
Book 0
THESE Fragments are entitled Epicteti Fragmenta maxime
ex Ioanne Stobaeo, Antonio, et Maximo collecta (ed.
Schweig.). There are some notes and emendations on the
Fragments; and a short dissertation on them by Schweighaeuser.
Nothing is known of Stobaeus nor of his time, except
the fact that he has preserved some extracts of an ethical
kind from the New Platonist Hierocles, who lived about
the middle of the fifth century A. D.; and it is therefore concluded that Stobaeus lived after Hierocles. The
fragments attributed to Epictetus are preserved by Stobaeus in his work entitled 'Ανφολόγιον, or Florilegium or
Sermones.
Antonius Monachus, a Greek monk, also made a Florilegium, entitled Melissa
(the bee). His date is uncertain, but it was certainly much later than the time of
Stobaeus.
Maximus, also named the monk, and reverenced as a
saint, is said to have been a native of Constantinople, and
born about A. D. 580.
Some of the Fragments contained in the edition of
Schweighaeuser are certainly not from Epictetus. Many
of the fragments are obscure; but they are translated as
accurately as I can translate them, and the reader must
give to them such meaning as he can.
[p. 406]
Ch. 1
THE life which is implicated with fortune (depends on
fortune) is like a winter torrent: for it is turbulent, and
full of mud, and difficult to cross, and tyrannical, and
noisy, and of short duration.