The Works of Epictetus: Discourses, Enchiridion, and Fragments

vii

PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.

But to revise any translation made a century ago is like repairing a telegraphic cable: one may inspect a good deal of it and find only trifling repairs needed, but then one may come to a point where a wholly new section must be inserted. These substitutions multiplied so rapidly—and even where the changes were slight, they touched words and phrases so vital—that the name I have chosen is really the most honest one that could be given. After all, it shows the thoroughness of Elizabeth Carter’s work that this process of "repairing" was even possible. With the loose, dashing, lively school of translators who preceded her in that century, such as L’Estrange and Collier, such an attempt would have been absurd. Their translations are very spirited—indeed, a capital study for coarse, colloquial English—but there is no foundation of accuracy in them. Yet the style of Epictetus has a concise and even delicate precision which perhaps only the Greek language could attain. To do justice to this without losing popular intelligibility requires all of Elizabeth Carter’s faithfulness, combined with a level of purely literary effort which she did not always provide. In her letters, she apologizes for "the awkwardness, in many places, of a version that is pretty strictly literal." If she erred on this