The Teaching of Epictetus

1. The husk is, of course, the body. If it is maintained that Nature has made the ease of this our only proper pursuit, of course the altruistic, or social instincts have to be rejected and denied.

2. The text is here almost certainly corrupt. It runs [Greek: pos oun hyponoetikoi esmen, hois me physike esti pros ta ekgona philostorgia]. All the MSS. agree in [Greek: hyponoetikoi], for which Schweighaeuser desires to read [Greek: pronoetikoi], and Wolf, [Greek: eti koinonikoi]. Salmasius declares emphatically for [Greek: pos oun epinoeis hoti koinonikoi esmen], and this, with a slight alteration suggested to me by an eminent living scholar, is the reading I have adopted: Let us suppose that Epictetus said [Greek: pos oun hyponoeis hoti k.e.], and that this was written in the short lines common in Greek MSS.:--

[Greek:

POSOUNYPO NOEISOTIKOI NONIKOI]

The second line, beginning with the same letter as the third, might easily be dropped by a transcriber, and the next transcriber would certainly change the resulting [Greek: hypononikoi] to [Greek: hyponoetikoi]. The existing reading might give the sense, "How are we, then, suspicious of those (if any there be) to whom Nature has given no affection for their offspring?"

3. Outward things--such as making provision for one's family, serving the State, etc.,--actions which are not directly concerned with our spiritual good.