The Discourses are Arrian's record of the teaching of the Stoic Epictetus, a freed slave from Hierapolis in Phrygia who taught at Nicopolis in Epirus after Domitian expelled the philosophers from Rome. Arrian, who heard him there in the early second century CE, says in the letter that prefaces the work that he tried to write down what Epictetus said in the words Epictetus used, to keep for himself a record of his teacher's thought and frankness of speech. The Greek is the plain koine of a teacher talking, not the Attic of Arrian's own histories.
The discourses are short and loosely joined: talks to pupils and visitors, with questions, objections and examples from Socrates, Diogenes and daily life. Their constant matter is set out at the start of Book I: what is in our power and what is not, and the right use of impressions. Book II opens on confidence and caution, Book III with a young student of rhetoric too careful of his hair, and Book IV with the long discourse on freedom. Photius knew eight books; four survive, and all the surviving copies descend from a single medieval manuscript now at Oxford. The Handbook, a digest of the teaching made by Arrian, survives separately.
Epictetus the Stoic Discourses of Epictetus by Arrian: summary and contents (PDF)
Epictetus the Stoic Discourses of Epictetus by Arrian: summary and contents (Markdown)
Contents
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Αʹ Book I
Opening on what is in our power and what is not, the first book of Arrian's record states the starting point of Epictetus' teaching: the gods gave us only the right use of impressions. Its short discourses answer pupils and visitors, such as a man asking how to end his brother's anger, told that nothing great comes suddenly, any more than a fig. It ends by rehearsing what to hold ready before a powerful man.
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Βʹ Book II
Confidence and caution, Epictetus argues at the start of this book, do not conflict: caution belongs to what lies in our choice, confidence to what does not, and we behave like deer that flee the feathers into the nets. The discourses press the gap between bold talk in the school and collapse in practice. The book ends on how to show a person the contradiction in his own error, as Socrates did with one witness.
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Γʹ Book III
A young student of rhetoric with elaborately dressed hair, in the first discourse of the third book, is told that what makes a man beautiful is human excellence, not grooming. One discourse rebukes those who set up as teachers unprepared, as if profaning the Eleusinian mysteries out of place and season. The last answers those who fear want and illness: the root of every evil is not death but the fear of death.
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Δʹ Book IV
Freedom is the subject of the long discourse that opens Book IV: no wrongdoer lives as he wishes, and a consul and friend of Caesar may be a slave however free his parents were. Later discourses turn on judgements as the only true fortification, and trace the war of Eteocles and Polynices to a judgement about tyranny. The book ends with a warning to those who share their secrets too readily.