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Arrian's Discourses of Epictetus
That when we cannot fulfil that which the character of a man promises, we assume the character of a philosopher.
What is the matter on which a good man should be employed, and in what we ought chiefly to practise ourselves.
3 Comp. i. c. 3.
4 The word is φίλαυτον, self-love, but here it means self-regard, which implies no censure. See Aristotle, Ethic. Nicom. ix. c. 8: ὡς ἐν αἰσχρῷ φιλαύτους ἀποκαλοῦσι. His conclusion is: οὕτω μὲν οὖν δεῖ φίλαυτον εἶναι, καθάπερ εἴρηται ὡς δ̓ οἱ πολλοί, οὐ χρή. See the note of Schweighaeuser. Epictetus, as usual, is right in his opinion of man's nature.
5 This has been misunderstood by Wolf. Schweighaeuser, who always writes like a man of sense, says: “Epictetus means by 'our proper interests,' the interests proper to man, as a man, as a rational being; and this interest or good consists in the proper use of our powers, and so far from being repugnant to common interest or utility, it contains within itself the notion of general utility and cannot be separated from it.”
6 Such a man was named in Greek κοιτωνίτης; in Latin “cubicu- larius,” a lord of the bedchamber, as we might say. Seneca, De Constantia Sapientis, c. 14, speaks “of the pride of the nomenclator (the announcer of the name), of the arrogance of the bedchamber man.” Even the clerk of the close-stool was an important person. Slaves used to carry this useful domestic vessel on a journey. Horat. Sat. i. 6, 109 (Upton).
7 Once the master of Epictetus (i. 1, 20).
8 Hand-kissing was in those times of tyranny the duty of a slave, not of a free man. This servile practice still exists among men called free.
9 Schweighaeuser says that he has introduced into the text Lord Shaftesbury's emendation, ὅπου. The emendation ὅπου is good, but Schweighaeuser has not put it in his text: he has οἷ τὸ ἀγαθὸν τιθέμεθα. Matthew vi. 21, “for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” So these people show by thanking God, what it is for which they are thankful.
10 Casaubon, in a learned note on Suetonius, Augustus, c. 18, informs us that divine honours were paid to Augustus at Nicopolis, which town he founded after the victory at Actium. The priesthood of Augustus at Nicopolis was a high office, and the priest gave his name to the year; that is, when it was intended in any writing to fix the year, either in any writing which related to public matters, or in instruments used in private affairs, the name of the priest of Augustus was used, and this was also the practice in most Greek cities. In order to establish the sense of this passage, Casaubon changed the text from τὰς φωνάς into τὰ σύμφωνα, which emendation Schweighaeuser has admitted into his text.
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