The Works of Epictetus: Discourses, Enchiridion, and Fragments

PREFACE TO REVISED EDITION.

It is always pleasant to an author, or even to a translator, when he finds a renewed demand for his work after an interval of twenty-five years. This demand appears all the more satisfactory in the present case, because this period of time has seen the appearance of two new versions of Epictetus A Stoic philosopher of the late 1st and early 2nd centuries AD. in England. My own translation has undergone a good deal of revision during this long interval and now bears few traces of Mrs. Carter’s Elizabeth Carter (1717–1806), an English poet and scholar known for her translation of Epictetus.—on which it was originally based—except in its general arrangement and in the use of some of her notes, here always designated by the appropriate initial. It is, however, of very little importance who receives the credit for the version, as long as the high thoughts of Epictetus secure a renewal and an enlargement of their audience.