9 - To be a slave

Summary

In the middle of the first Century AD at Phrygian Hierapolis in the Roman province of Asia, a child was born who in adulthood and much further to the west was to achieve lasting fame as a philosopher. He spent a considerable portion of his life in Rome, commingling with members of the Roman elite and studying in the Flavian era with the eminent Musonius Rufus. Subsequently, when Domitian in the early nineties expelled philosophers from the city, he took up residence at Nicopolis in Epirus and there he attracted audiences of Roman officials, among others, who stopped to hear him as they journeyed to and from Rome's eastern provinces. About AD 108 the young L. Flavius Arrianus, a future consul, historian and redactor of the philosopher's teachings, was among the visitors and somewhat later the emperor Hadrian may well have made an appearance too. The child was Epictetus. Yet when he was born there could have been little anticipation of future celebrity or association with the powerful, for Epictetus was born a slave and owed both his early translation to Rome and his introduction there to philosophy to the accident of belonging to the freedman Epaphroditus, who in the reign of Nero was the emperor's secretary a libellis.

It was because of slavery that Epictetus became a philosopher – slavery brought Epictetus, that is to say, certain opportunities, perhaps even advantages he might otherwise have never known.