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Podcast: New Books in Biography & Memoir
Episode: Robin Waterfield, trans. and ed., "The Complete Works of Epictetus: Handbook, Discourses, and Fragments" (U Chicago Press, 2022)
Description: Epictetus was born into slavery around the year 50 CE, and, upon being granted his freedom, he set himself up as a philosophy teacher. After being expelled from Rome, he spent the rest of his life living and teaching in Greece. He is now considered the most important exponent of Stoicism, and his surviving work comprises a series of impassioned discourses, delivered live and recorded by his student Arrian, and the Handbook, Arrian’s own take on the heart of Epictetus’s teaching.In Discourses, Epictetus argues that happiness depends on knowing what is in our power to affect...