Epictetus Works (Discourses, Enchiridion, Fragments)

PREFACE.

Elizabeth Carter’s version of Epictetus has outlived every English prose translation of its day and has admirably maintained its reputation with readers. While Marcus Aurelius Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher, author of the Meditations has had a series of English versions, the complete works of Epictetus have had only this one, which was reproduced in four different editions. Even of the Enchiridion Greek: "handbook" or "manual", of which there had been at least five different versions in England before her time—two of which had gone through six editions each—I am not aware that any later translation has been printed there. The main reason for this, undoubtedly, is that there was absolutely no work done at that time of such high quality.

Thomas Taylor An English translator known for his devotion to Platonism and Neoplatonism indeed grudgingly says that this translation “is as good as a person ignorant of philosophy can be supposed to make.”* But the philosophy of Epictetus was entirely of the practical sort, and quite unlike those cloudy regions of Proclus and Plotinus Late antique Neoplatonist philosophers known for their complex and mystical metaphysical systems in which Thomas Taylor loved to wander. Whatever it was, Elizabeth Carter understood it and translated it almost too technically; and if she knew—

* See his translation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Book III, chapter 3, note. original: "Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, B. III. c. 3, note"