Epictetus · c. 50 – c. 135 CE
Discourses 1.1 ¶5 — Epictetus
From “Of the Things Which Are in Our Power, and Not in Our Power”
Translation by George Long (1877)
Epictetus, Discourses 1.1 ¶5
Must I then alone have my head cut off? What, would you have all men lose their heads that you may be consoled? Will you not stretch out your neck as Lateranus did at Rome when Nero ordered him to be beheaded? For when he had stretched out his neck, and received a feeble blow, which made him draw it in for a moment, he stretched it out again. And a little before, when he was visited by Epaphroditus, Nero’s freedman, who asked him about the cause of offense which he had given, he said, “If I choose to tell anything, I will tell your master.”
Cite this passage
Epictetus, Discourses 1.1 ¶5, tr. George Long (1877)
https://whatwouldstoicsdo.com/passage/discourses/1.1.5
Epictetus, Discourses (as recorded by Arrian), tr. George Long (1877). Text: Standard Ebooks (CC0). Sources and licences
In plain English
AI-written notesComplaining that you alone should suffer a misfortune helps no one. A man ordered beheaded by the emperor calmly stretched out his neck, offered it again after a weak first blow, and earlier refused to give the emperor's servant any information, keeping his composure and his own counsel.
Older wording
- “freedman”
- — a former slave who has been set free
Themes and situations
- Courage
- Acceptance and fate
- Death and mortality
- What is in our control
- Fear of death
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